Sprinter Elaine Thompson-Herah and sprint hurdler, Hansle Parchment, were named Jamaica’s National Sportsman and Sportswoman of the Year for 2021, at the RJRGleaner Sports Foundation National Sportsman and Sportswoman of the Year awards ceremony held on Friday night.
The event was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Thompson-Herah had a phenomenal 2021 season, which included her winning the 100m at the Diamond League final in Zurich and running 10.54 at the Eugene Diamond League to become the fastest woman alive and second fastest woman of all time.
Her greatest achievement in 2021, however, would have to be when she became the first woman in history to win the sprint double at consecutive Olympic Games.
Backing up her exploits from Rio in 2016, Thompson-Herah produced times of 10.61 and 21.53 to win gold medals in both the 100m and 200m at the Tokyo Olympics, in addition to being a part of Jamaica’s 4x100m relay team, alongside Briana Williams, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, who finished as runner-up for the Sportswoman of the Year award, and Shericka Jackson, that won the gold medal in a national record 41.02.
Parchment shocked the world to win gold in the Men’s 110m Hurdles in Tokyo, nine years after his bronze medal performance at the London Olympics.
He ran 13.04 to win gold in Tokyo ahead of prohibitive favourite Grant Holloway of the USA.
The past student of Morant Bay High and Kingston College was also third at the Diamond League final in Zurich.
His teammate Ronald Levy, who was the runner-up for the Sportsman of the Year Award, took home the bronze medal in Tokyo.
Other major awards given out on the day include the Chairman's Award to veteran journalist Lance Whittaker; the People's Choice "Performance of the Year Award" to Fraser McConnell; the VM Group Y.O.U.T.H Award to sprinter Tina Clayton and the Gleaner Newspaper Iconic Award to Michael Holding.
Garvey Maceo High School produced a five-star performance to win their first daCosta Cup title since 2007 with a comprehensive 5-0 win over Manning’s at STETHS today.
Garvey Maceo captain Gregory Cousins continued his stellar form this season with a hat-trick.
He gave his team the lead in the 14th minute with a composed right-footed finish after a wonderful display of skill to beat two Manning’s defenders.
Cousins got his second of the game to put Garvey Maceo 2-0 ahead in the 35th minute and completed his hat-trick with a 74th-minute free-kick from just outside the 18-yard box.
Cleo Clark got the other two Garvey Maceo goals on the day in the 45th and 85th minutes.
Garvey Maceo now have three schoolboy football titles in their history including two daCosta Cup titles and one Ben Francis Cup title.
They will now play either Kingston College or Jamaica College in the Olivier Shield.
Prominent Napoli forward Hirving ‘Chucky’ Lozano will miss out for Mexico against Jamaica’s Reggae Boyz, in the upcoming crunch World Cup qualifier, due to an accumulation of yellow cards.
The match is shaping up to be a crucial fixture for both teams. The Jamaicans still harbour hope of securing a spot at the upcoming FIFA World Cup but find themselves off the pace in 6th place, seven points behind the final qualification spot with a few games to go. However, the Mexicans could also find themselves out of the qualifying spots if the result does not go their way, as they are currently in third on 14 points, the same amount as third-place Panama.
With crucial points on the line, Mexico would love to have the Napoli player to call upon. The player, however, received a yellow card in the game against Canada, in the last round, on November 16, and prior to that one against El Salvador in October.
The player has nonetheless been called up for the round of matches and is expected to feature in follow-up games against Costa Rica and Panama.
Edwin Allen High School won their first trophy in schoolboy football after defeating St. Elizabeth Technical 3-2 in an enthralling final at STETHS on Friday.
Negus Daley followed up his goal in the semi-final against Frome Technical with the opener for the home side in the 16th minute.
Edwin Allen got the equalizer in the 47th minute through a right-footed strike from close range by Alwayne Bryan.
Jahiem Harris scored the first of his two goals on the day to give Edwin Allen a 2-1 lead in the 63rd minute.
Substitute Davin Wright got the goal that he thought would send the game to penalties for STETHS with a header in the 85th minute to make it 2-2 before Harris got his second of the game, a brilliant left-footed strike from outside the box to give Edwin Allen a 3-2 lead and secure their maiden Ben Francis Cup title.
Life under interim manager Paul Hall got off to a shaky for Jamaica’s Reggae Boyz following a 3-0 loss to Peru at the Estadio Nacional, in Peru, on Thursday.
Following a scoreless, even first half the game burst into life when Lewis Iberico outjumped the Jamaican backline to head past goalkeeper Amal Knight in the 48th minute. Another bit of poor defending saw Alex Valera intercept a ball played across the area to double the host’s lead in the 66th minute.
Given too much room just outside the area, Yosimar Yotune finished things off with a long-range blast, which saw a diving Knight come up empty-handed. The mostly locally-based team put together enterprising play at times but seemed to lack ideas and accuracy in the final third of the pitch.
The full squad will be back in action next Thursday when they host Mexico in the World Cup qualifiers. Three days later the team will head to Panama, before hosting Costa Rica at home. Hall replaced Theodore Whitmore as head coach of the team last month, following a string of disappointing results.
Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) president Michael Ricketts has expressed disappointment with the government’s decision not to allow fans to attend the upcoming World Cup qualifier against Mexico, and possibly Costa Rica.
The Reggae Boyz will return to action against El Tri on the 27th of January, in a crucial World Cup qualifier at the National Stadium. The team has played the majority of home matches so far with empty stands, impacted by the government’s Covid-19 management protocols.
The exception came against the United States in the last round, where up to 5,000 vaccinated fans were allowed to attend the fixture. The JFF was hoping to have the same number of fans, if not more, but the recent increase of coronavirus cases, however, meant they had other ideas.
“Covid will be here if not forever, for a very long time so you just have to put things in place and figure out how best you are going to navigate this pandemic,” Ricketts said.
“We must live with Covid, so we must adhere to the protocols and be as careful as we can, but we must also understand that life goes on.”
The Reggae Boyz have been the only team in the octagonal round that has been affected so severely by coronavirus restrictions, with many other teams sticking to the practice of limiting the numbers of fans allowed at the venues.
Jamaica, however, has the lowest vaccination rate of all the countries participating in the qualifiers.
Former West Indies cricketer Shivnarine Chanderpaul has been appointed Jamaica Tallawahs new Head Coach.
The 47-year-old left-hander, who has played 164 Tests, 268 ODIs and 22 T20Is, scoring a total of 20,988 runs for the West Indies, will take charge of the team for the 2022 Hero Caribbean Premier League (CPL).
"Shivnarine has had an illustrious playing career and is one of the greats of the game. He has served West Indies cricket with distinction, and I know that he will take the Tallawahs to new heights," said Krishna Persaud, owner of the Jamaica Tallawahs.
For his part, Chanderpaul is excited to join the unit and hopes to lead the team back to winning ways.
"It’s an absolute honour to be appointed as the new Head Coach of the Jamaica Tallawahs and I am really looking forward to working with the players and support staff to bring another championship to Jamaica," Chanderpaul said.
Sir Curtly Ambrose has also joined the Jamaica Tallawahs support staff for Hero CPL 2022.
The legend, one of the greatest fast bowlers of all time with 405 Test wickets and another 225 in ODIs, will serve as the Tallawahs bowling coach.
“Sir Curtly brings a lot of technical expertise and experience to the Tallawahs and we look forward to having him with the team,” stated the Guyanese Businessman.
Jamaican Andre Coley has also been appointed assistant coach of the team.
Coley was a member of the inaugural management team at the High Performance Centre Programme based in Barbados from 2010 – 2013.
He was the former Head Coach of the Windward Islands Volcanoes first-class franchise between 2017-2019 and is currently the Head Coach of the Jamaica Scorpions first-class franchise from 2019 to the present.
“We are excited and welcome Chanderpaul, Sir Curtly and Coley to the Tallawahs family,” stated Jeff Miller, General Manager of the Tallawahs.
History-making Jamaica Alpine skier, Alexander Benjamin, believes the country possesses the attributes to produce top-quality skiers on a consistent basis and hopes to be the first of many.
At 38 years old Benjamin made history for the Caribbean after qualifying for the event at the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics. He is, however, the second skier to do so for Jamaica behind Errol Kerr who competed in Freestyle skiing at the 2010 Winter Olympics where he finished in 9th position. Kerr’s finish remains the best placing by a Caribbean athlete at any Winter Olympics.
Despite the fame garnered from the 1988 Winter Olympics four-man bobsled team, immortalised by the cult classic Cool Runnings, it is the Summer Olympics that have been the forte of the Caribbean island.
Led by Jamaican track and field legend Usain Bolt, Beijing was a happy hunting ground for the country’s Summer Olympic team in 2008, where they claimed 11 medals. While Benjamin won’t necessarily expect that type of success, the newly minted Olympian believes there is plenty of talent to harness within the country and throughout the diaspora.
“What my story is all about is encouraging the next generation of Jamaicans to start before 32, so that we can have a real chance at medaling,” Benjamin told the SportsMax Zone.
“I’ve already identified three Jamaicans in New York, who started skiing when they were less than two years old, and they’ve been race training for the last 10 years. So, they’re now 14 years old and these guys are going to come with force when we get to the 2026 Games,” he added.
“I think that we can get a really strong ski team from the pool of talent we already have in Jamaica and the diaspora.”
Benjamin has targeted being actively involved with the Jamaica Ski Federation (JSF). Richard Salm the former president of the JSF died of injuries sustained in a motor vehicle accident last year.
A record number of coaches, who were last year registered by the Jamaica Olympic Association (JOA) for a rigorous hi-level coaches' course hosted by the Pan Am Sports Organization (PASO), successfully completed and are on course to achieve international certification.
Coaches from several sports including handball, badminton, judo, taekwondo, gymnastics, baseball, chess, volleyball, lawn tennis and track and field, completed, over six months, seven modules covering areas such as Coaching Philosophy and Leadership, Advanced Performance Planning, Energy Systems and Physiology, Strength and Conditioning, Sports Psychology, Advanced Injury Prevention, Recovery Strategies and High Performance Analysis.
"Capacity, capability and competency are the three Cs in the educational trilogy of the JOA's empowerment agenda for our coaches who are really the starters, drivers and finishers of the assets of sport development which are our athletes" President of the Jamaica Olympic Association, Christopher Samuda, commented on the success of the initiative.
Participants across the spectrum of sport have lauded the initiative as "groundbreaking and a step by the JOA in the right direction."
Ryan Foster, Secretary General/CEO of the Jamaica Olympic Association, was pleased with the level of support from the sporting federations and remarked "the response to JOA's call was deafening as it was instructive and demonstrates that coaches want to be and have become a part of the transformation being led by the JOA."
The JOA last year inaugurated its historic, "Olympic Scholars," an athlete scholarship grant, under which several persons benefited from financial assistance in academic and career pursuits. "This is money giving currency and value to athletes and this is an investment the dividends of which are capitalizing sport and the human capital" Foster said.
With a strong bi-lateral partnership with the United States Sports Academy (USSA), a strategic alliance World Eleven Inc and the Argentine Football Association and protocols of co-operation with regional and international stakeholders, "the JOA is instilling a culture of excellence in sport education and bringing the sciences and technology of sport into the equation of success." Samuda remarked.
The JOA will later this year make a call for another coaches' hi-level course and it is expected that it will be oversubscribed as stakeholders in the sporting sector continue to seize opportunities which the governing body is creating.
Jamaica’s Reggae Boyz will once again be without fans for upcoming home World Cup qualifiers against Mexico and Costa Rica as the government looks to put measures in place to combat the recent spike in coronavirus cases.
The country has played the majority of its matches behind closed doors, so far, with the lone exception being its last match against the United States, which allowed for 5000 vaccinated spectators to be present.
With 15 more COVID deaths, 1,548 new cases, and a positivity rate of 51.5 percent, as of Tuesday, however, the Government has decided to return to closed-door measures. The Reggae Boyz have been the only team in the octagonal round that has been affected so severely by coronavirus restrictions, with many other teams sticking to the practice of limiting the numbers of fans allowed at the venues.
Jamaica, however, has the lowest vaccination rate of all the countries participating in the qualifiers with just 557,000 persons fully vaccinated, representing just 20.4 percent of the population.
The Reggae Boyz will be hoping to make a late run to book a place at this year’s FIFA World Cup having found themselves well off the pace midway through the qualifiers. The team is currently 6th in the standings on 7 points, seven short of the final qualification spot. The team will kick off the next round with a match against Mexico on January 27th, followed by a trip to Panama three days later and a home fixture against Costa Rica on January 30.
Mona High has been removed from the final of the ISSA Walker Cup after being found guilty of using ineligible players.
Mona was expected to face defending champions St Catherine in the final of the competition, on Saturday, after securing their spot last week with a resounding 5-0 win over Kingston Technical.
However, following a decision handed down by ISSA on Tuesday, it is Kingston Technical who will now replace Mona in the final. The issue stems from the school’s use of two ineligible players during the semifinal of the Walker Cup.
During the Manning Cup quarterfinal against St Andrew Technical, two Mona players, Ronaldo Jones, and Carlton Brown received red cards. While Jones received a straight red card, Brown got two yellow cards. Neither should have been eligible for the Walker Cup semifinals but were still used in the fixture.
"If a player receives a “red card” he automatically misses the next scheduled match in the competition in which he is eligible,” the release issue by ISSA stated.
Mona is coached by Phoenix All-Star Football Academy manager Craig Butler.
Jamaica Bobsled and Skeleton Federation (JBSF) High Performance Director Mark Silver has lamented the circumstances that saw the country’s women’s two-woman team edged out of the Olympic qualifying positions.
Up to last month, the women’s team of Jazmine Fenlator-Victorian and brake woman Audra Segree were favoured to be listed among the automatic qualifiers for the Beijing 2022 Winter Games, among the world’s top 12 teams. By the time January rolled around, however, a conflation of unfortunate circumstances had changed things entirely. According to Silver, things began to go wrong from the perspective of the team at Latvia's Sigulda World Series where there was a Covid-19 outbreak.
“We did everything we could. We missed out because of the weather and believe it or not Covid,” Silver explained.
How it works is there are races across the world, after Christmas, the first race was in Latvia, and unfortunately, 7 athletes couldn’t race, which meant that athletes that would have finished lower down finished higher and received points that they wouldn’t have if the race was full of athletes,” he added.
“In another race, a massive amount of snow meant that athletes who raced later benefited from the snow being clear. Now, with the snow it's part of the sport, we expect that.”
In the final standing, the team finished tied with France for the final spot but were edge out via the tiebreak. The team could still qualify for the Games if France or any of the other 10 teams above them Germany, Canada, United States, China, ROC, Switzerland, Romania, Austria, Great Britain, Australia, or Belgium are unable to take part in the event.
“With Covid, the girls finished third overall on the NAC, and before Christmas, I would have said I was confident and with the press release, had it been what we had expected and predicted they were probably our safest option,” he added
“However, things that changed but that’s sports. For each bad thing that goes against you sometimes we get good things and fingers crossed we were bang on points, and who knows maybe this time around luck will go with us. Hopefully not at the expense of anyone else but hopefully the girls will get to live their dreams as well because they worked so hard.”
Edwin Allen High and St. Elizabeth Technical will contest the final of the Ben Francis Cup Knockout after winning their respective semi-final fixtures on Tuesday.
The double-header at STETHS saw Edwin Allen secure a comfortable 4-0 victory over Manchester High in the opening fixture and the host school pulling out a 1-0 win over Frome Technical in the second.
The final will be played at STETHS on Friday, January 21.
The hosts will be looking to secure their seventh Ben Francis Cup while Edwin Allen will be seeking their first.
President of the Jamaica Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation, Chris Stokes, admits it is a special feeling to see the country’s four-man men’s team heading back to the Winter Olympics for the first time in 24 years.
Inescapably, whenever a Jamaica team qualifies for the Olympics, an inexorable link is made to the 1993 smash hit Cool Runnings, which starred the late John Candy and Doug E. Doug that went on to become a cult classic.
Unlike the movie, however, the hard yards put in to get to the Olympics, for the nation that has never seen a drop of snow, has always been real.
Stokes was a last-minute alternate when the team crashed the sled during the historic catapult down the ice in the four-man competition, in Calgary 1988, for the squad that would become immortalised in film. He and others have pushed on ever since. The team has subsequently appeared at another eight Olympic Games. The men’s team, however, last appeared at the Winter sports spectacle in 2014 when a two-man team of Marvin Dixon and Winston Watts finished in 24th place and have not taken part as a four-man unit since 1998. In the upcoming Olympics, the men’s team will make a triumphant return, but the team has also qualified for the two-man event and women’s monobob to appear in a historic three events.
“It has a special place in my heart to know that we will be in the four-man event once again at the Olympics, having been a part of that team myself (In 1988) it gives me great satisfaction,” Stokes said.
“It's not something that we take for granted it's hard work every time to qualify and it is a huge step for us to have three teams at the Games this year.”
With a bit more luck it could have been four, with the women’s two-woman team finishing just outside of the automatic qualification spots based on a tiebreaker. The team could still appear at the Games having secured the position as the first alternate, should any of the automatic qualifiers withdraw from the event.
“The two-woman team of Audra Segree and Jazmine Fenlator-Victorian were close. They were in the qualifying spots for most of the way but in the last few weeks, I think some very questionable decisions were made when it comes to qualification. I can’t say that I was surprised because these things happen, but it was unfortunate.”
The women’s team made its debut at the 2018 Winter Games with Fenlator-Victorian and Carrie Russell taking part in the event. Despite the possibility of that team being left out this time around, qualifying three teams is not a feat to be scoffed at.
“We have an absolutely outstanding program and we don’t take it for granted. We have a strong administration and an elite coaching staff that are wanted all over the world.”
Jamaica and Oregon sprinter, Kemba Nelson, picked up where she left off last season with a narrow win in the women’s 60m at the Cougar Classic Invitational in Spokane.
The reigning NCAA champion only narrowly got the better of Double Pillar Athletics sprinter Destiny Smith-Barnett. In fact, both athletes were given the same time of 7.19 after crossing the line but it was Nelson who had the better time when the photo finish was used. Oregon’s Jadyn Mays was third in 7.27.
Elsewhere jumper Lamara Distin, a sophomore at Texas A&M, cleared an indoor personal-best 1.88m to win the women’s high jump at the two-day Ted Nelson Invitational. Nissi Kabongo of Stephen Austin recorded the second-best mark with 1.85m, while Texas’ Allyson Andress was third with 1.73.
SportsMax is the Caribbean sports channel of choice, committed to providing sporting content of the highest quality to the Caribbean, delivered by a team of highly innovative, passionate and qualified professionals.
(876) 619-7629
digitalmedia@sportsmax.tv
