Jamaica’s Shanieka Ricketts was the only winner from the Caribbean at Sunday’s Diamond League meeting in Gateshead where Dina Asher-Smith upstaged Sha Carri Richardson and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce.

Ricketts, the 2019 World Championships triple silver medalist jumped out to 14.40m to take gold. It was close thing with Portugal’s Patricia Mamoa, who jumped a season-best 14.37m for second place. Naomi Ogbeta of Great Britain got a season-best 14.29m for third.

Afterwards, Ricketts said the conditions were difficult to deal with.

 “It was brutal. I am just so happy I didn't end up injured. It was really hard to focus on technical things and not very conducive to getting good jumps. I just wanted to get myself into the position to have an extra jump and then the only thing that mattered was to get the best jump,” she said while revealing that she is not yet sold on the final-three concept.

“I was a bit sceptical but it is something we need to get used to.”

There were also second-place finishes for Trinidad and Tobago’s Keshorn Walcott, the 2012 Olympic champion, Danniel Thomas-Dodd, and Stephenie-Ann McPherson in the javelin, shot put and 400m, respectively.

Walcott, who was also the bronze medalist at Rio 2016, threw 77.78m, to take the runner-up spot as Poland’s Marcin Krukowski defied the wind and rain to throw 82.61m. He was the only thrower over 80m.

Sweden’s Kim Amb was third with a heave of 76.96m.

Thomas-Dodd just lost out to Portugal’s Auriol Dongmo, who threw 19.08m in the shot put to advance to the final round. Thomas-Dodd, whose best effort was 18.46 also advanced along with the USA’s Maggie Ewen who put 18.54m.

However, in the final round where the previous throws were cancelled, Thomas-Dodd threw 18.12m that was bettered by 18.16m from the Cameroon transfer.  Ewen threw 16.96m for third.

Thomas-Dodd, who said she expected a better showing, vented her frustrations afterwards.

“It's a little bit frustrating because I've been working on a lot of things with my technique which I'm still trying to get in competition. I had some really nice throws today but I wasn’t able to stay in the ring so that's just one of the things I need to go back to the drawing board and work on,” she declared, adding that she would use the conditions as an excuse for her performance.

“That's all I can hope for (to refine technique and to come good at the right time). I know with the time I have it's about fine-tuning those little things. I never complain about conditions because you never know what you'll get wherever you go, so you have to be mentally prepared for whatever conditions you get on the day. You have to work with what you can control and that's being in the ring and working with your technique.”

McPherson produced a strong finish but ran out of real estate to finish second in 400m won by the USA’s Kendall Ellis in 51.86. McPherson clocked 51.96 while holding off Lieke Klaver of the Netherlands was third in a season-best 52.03.

Janieve Russell was beaten into third place in the 400m hurdles by Denmark’s Sara Slott Petersen and Great Britain’s Jessica Turner, who clocked 56.32 and 56.56, respectively.

Tajay Gayle had to settle for third place in the long jump when he was unable to soar beyond 8.14m in the final round where his preliminary round jump of 8.00m was of no consequence except that it got him into the final.

There, Italy’s Phillippo Randazza leapt out to 8.11m to win over Eusebio Caceres, who got 8.04m on his final jump. Gayle could only muster 7.91m which got him third.

Justin Burrowes extended his lead to 11 strokes on day three of the Alliance National Amateur Golf Championship on Saturday at the Caymanas Golf Club. He shot two under par 70 for a three-day total of 212 (73, 69, 70) and is poised to secure victory when play resumes at 7:30 today.

“Today (Saturday) was another pretty good day. (I) gave myself a lot of opportunities, which is really what I set out to do.  It didn't convert as much as I would have liked but still, all in all, I would say a lot more positives than negatives today,” said Burrowes, who started the day with a birdie and followed up with three more on holes 11, 12 and 15 while posting two bogeys on holes 14 and 18.

“In a good place to build on.  The course was definitely more inviting today with the softer conditions - no wind and no rain.  It was definitely more inviting. I played solid but I didn't hold enough putts today to go really deep so hopefully, I can build on today and do that tomorrow (Sunday)."

Meanwhile, defending champion William Knibbs posted his first under-par score of 70 but is still 11 strokes off the lead.  He has a combined score of 223 after posting 74 and 79 on days one and two, respectively.

 He expressed satisfaction with the round especially after day two, saying "After yesterday (Friday), I would say that it could have only gotten better today (Saturday) and obviously it was better. Two under but as with most of what I have done this week there were always shots that I felt that I could have done better with or putts that I could have made but I am just happy to have bounced back today."

 His scorecard showed one eagle, three birdies and three bogeys.

Dr Mark Newnham, who was in second place on day two, dropped to third after scoring six over par 78 for a three-day total of 228.

Mention must be made of 15-year old Aman Dhiman, who posted the lowest score of the championship so far, a four-under-par 68.  He sunk five birdies on holes 1, 2, 4, 7 and 16 before bogeying the 10^th hole.

The perennial ladies’ national champion Jodi Munn-Barrow, who led from day one is again the national champion.  The female championships ran over three days and she posted scores of 72, 77 and 74 for a total of 223 to be leagues ahead of second-place Samantha Azan who shot 82 on the final day for a total score of 251.  Third place went to Winni Lau.  She shot 91 for an overall score of 271.

 "Happy with my overall performance today (Saturday). (I) was able to focus and just play the holes as they came, played a shot at a time and happy to finish with two over,” she said.

“Seven over for the three days so I am pleased with the overall performance and happy once again I was able to become the national amateur champion."

The Ladies 13 - 24 category went to Valerie Grant 102 (308) followed by Suzan White 108 (324).

The Men 7-12 category had two golfers with scores of 86 for Thajae Richards for a total of 252 and who still leads Richard White, who shot 89 and now totals 279.

There is a new leader in the Men Senior 0-12 category with former Cricket West Indies president Dave Cameron 81 (245), ahead of Tony Allison 83 (245) in second and Vikram Dhuman 78 (245) in third.

The Men Super Senior 0-12 also has a new leader in Mike Boyd 74 (235), followed by George Hugh with an 82 (240) and the day-one leader, former JGA president Wayne Chai Chong shot 81 (240).

The final male category - Men Super Senior 13 and over, with one occupant - Desmond Brown scored 93 for a three-day total of 282.

The juniors who competed over two days which ended on Saturday saw Sebastian Azan copping the Boys 14-15 category with scores of 78 and 81 for a combined score of 159.  Ryan Lue took second spot after posting 82 and 79 (161) while Trey Williams was third 87, 79, (161).

Michael Lowe topped the Boys 16-17 category.  He had scores of 85 and 87 (172).  Zaniel Knight was second with scores of 91 and 89 (180) while Justin Wainwright 116 and 124 (240) was third.

Shadae Lawrence, Jamaica women’s national record holder in the discus, shattered the record twice on her way to a second-place finish at the USATF Throws Festival at the University of Arizona on Saturday evening.

Frustrated by recurring injuries that have stifled his ambition and cut his progress off at the knees, 2013 World U18 Champion Martin Manley has opted for retirement at the age of 24.

Fedrick Dacres, the 2019 World Championship discus silver medalist said he is not satisfied but thankful following his season-best throw that earned him victory at the 2021 Tucson Elite Classic in Arizona on Thursday.

After a 14-month hiatus, football resumes in the land of wood and water with the Jamaica Premier League is set to kick off spectator free on Saturday, June 26, with the final scheduled for Sunday, September 26, 2021.

Chairman of the Professional Footballers Association of Jamaica, Chris Williams, made the announcement earlier today during a Zoom press conference and which was attended by the main stakeholders including Jamaica Football Federation President Michael Ricketts, Minister of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sports Olivia Grange as well representatives of team sponsors, presenting sponsors Digicel and broadcast partners Sportsmax Ltd.

Williams revealed that a total of 66 matches are expected to be played during the preliminary round of the competition where each of the 12 teams will play each other once. Matches will be played in double-headers on Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays. 

At the end of the round, the teams will be separated into two tiers. The bottom six teams will play each other in a round-robin format for points that will determine rank.

Meanwhile, the top two teams will automatically advance to the semi-finals while the remaining four will play for the remaining two spots.

The semi-finals will take over two legs with the team with the better aggregate advancing to the finals.

No team will face relegation this season.

Four venues have been approved for matches with the National Stadium and Sabina Park being the preferred venues. Should there be a scheduling conflict, Williams explained, Stadium East and the Captain Horace Burrell Centre of Excellence at the University of the West Indies, Mona campus will be used to stage matches.

In relation to player and personnel safety, players and support staff will be tested for the Covid-19 virus in the days leading up to matches.

Minister Grange revealed that there is a plan is to have all players vaccinated.

Further announcements are planned to unveil team sponsors and uniforms as well as the fixture schedule.

Strange as it may sound, Tyra Gittens is both happy and disappointed with her record-breaking performance in the heptathlon at the SEC Championships at Bryan College Station in Texas last weekend.

The 22-year-old Trinidadian who attends Texas A&M University scored a personal best 6418 points to win the two-day event. Her score which was just two points off the Olympic qualifying standard of 6420 points is also a championship-leading effort as well as a meet and facility record. 

“I am proud of where I am. I am proud of my accomplishments. I hope the world sees that I have so much potential and I have so much more room to grow. This is just the beginning,” she said.

Along the way, Gittens achieved several personal milestones, including a massive personal lifetime best in the long jump of 6.96, which qualifies her for the Olympics this summer and a personal best and a national record 1.95m for the high jump and a centimetre shy of the Olympic standard.

It was also the first time in history that a woman had jumped 1.95m in the high jump and beyond 6.95m in the long jump in the same heptathlon. Gittens now holds national records for the high jump outdoors and indoors, the long jump outdoors and indoors, the pentathlon and the heptathlon.

However, she wasn’t satisfied and revealed her true ambitions, believing she is capable of so much more.

“I don’t like to talk about my goals publicly because then people take it as ‘Oh, she’s trying to talk smack’ but I want people to hold me accountable when I say this. I want to be the ultimate heptathlete and that means breaking Jackie Joyner’s record and that’s what I’m going for.

 “This is my first time saying that publicly but I have never been at a point in my life when I’ve felt so confident saying that, and after this weekend, even though my heptathlon wasn’t what I wanted, my mentality and how I pushed through one of the hardest weekends but one of the best weekends of my life, I am ready and I know, I really think I can get this world record.”

 It is that lofty goal and it is the accompanying mentality that has her experiencing mixed feelings about her record-breaking weekend. Joyner-Kersee’s heptathlon record, which has stood since 1988, is 7291 points and it explains why Gittens wasn’t so happy with her performance last weekend because she understands that if she is to break that record, she has to be better at all her disciplines, not just two or three.

 “The long jump and the high jump were the highlights of my meet. I rarely surprise myself but I definitely surprised myself in the long jump,” she the Texas A&M senior said.

 “The high jump wasn’t necessarily a surprise. I knew this is where I wanted to be around this time. In the long jump, I didn’t expect to reach 6.90 so soon. I know I could do it, I knew I could be up there but I was thinking later on in my career, like years later.”

However, as good as she was in the long and high jumps, Gitten concedes that her performance in several other disciplines did not meet her expectations and it was a bitter pill to swallow.

 “The shot put definitely hurt me, just because of how inconsistent it was. It was embarrassing for me to come off such a high in the high jump, not to be able to gather myself correctly for the shot put. I thought I did but I still had a lot of adrenalin and excitement from the high jump and it never allowed me to focus on the shot put and it just didn’t click,” she said of her 658-point 11.96m throw that was well short of her 13.58m throw that earned her 807 points in a heptathlon on May 8.

 She was equally devastated by how poor she was in the 800m that she completed in 2:31.97 and which she said came as a shock.

 “The 800 was a surprise. I did not expect to run that slow. I started the race and normally I have someone yelling my 100m splits but this time there were two events going on so my coach wasn’t able to so he put some people to say the times. I didn’t hear them and so I was kind of running blindly and it wasn’t until the last 150 when I saw the finish-line time board and I saw that I was way behind my pace,” she said.

“I honestly started tearing up running down the straightaway because I knew I didn’t set myself up in the other events like the shot put and the hurdles, even though my long jump and high jump were great, the Hep was not very consistent for me.” 

Such is the mentality of the effervescent Trinidadian that she has chosen to focus on the silver lining rather than dwell on the dark clouds.

 “That being said, everything happens for a reason. I was very impressed with myself that my hep was a pretty bad one. The things that saved me, the high jump, my 200 and long jump because everything else was not where I wanted to be at all,” she confessed, “the hurdles, shot put, javelin even though it was PB in the Hep for me, I see myself a little farther along than 40 metres. The 800 definitely broke my heart.”

She was devastated to come so close to the Olympic standard. 

“Being only two points away from the standard is definitely tough to swallow because it was just two points and I knew what I needed to do but at the end of the day, it is what it is. It happened. I came out with an Olympic standard and literally kissing the other standards,” she said. 

“I am on pace. I knew my open events would come before my Hep because it is a lot harder to put together than get one jump. I am not worried. I am not stressing. I am actually above my pace for what I want to do and the next Hep is going to be bigger and better because I am going to come in ready to be more consistent and ready to stay focused. 

“I want to shine. I want to be the ultimate heptathlete, meaning I want to be consistently good, amazing in some (events) and consistently good in others. I would love to be a Jackie Joyner and be amazing at all seven but that’s not my reality, so you have to take advantage of what you’re really good at and then you have to work and stay focused on what you’re not so gifted in.”

 Gittens also finished second in the individual high jump, clearing 1.89m. She was also fourth in the long jump with a 6.56m leap. For her efforts, she was named United States Track & Field Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) National Athlete of the Week.

Jamaican Olympian Neville Myton died today after a prolonged battle was cancer. He was 74.

There will be changes to way in which Cricket West Indies awards retainer contracts following backlash to the recent announcements of players who received contracts for the coming year.

Veronica Campbell-Brown was second in the 100m at the 2021 USATF Open on Tuesday. The two-time Olympic gold medalist was among several notable Caribbean athletes, who competed at the meet held at the Athletic Performance Ranch in Fort Worth, Texas.

Jamaica-born Manchester City forward Raheem Sterling has signed a multi-year boot deal with New Balance that includes support for disadvantaged children in the country of his birth and other communities in the United Kingdom.

The Guyana Cricket Board has written to Cricket West Indies expressing what it says is its disappointment at public comments made by Chairman of Selectors Roger Harper relating to four Guyanese players, who were not awarded retainer contracts by the governing body.

Learning from the mistakes made during the indoor season has resulted in a new personal best in the long jump for Carey McLeod this past weekend when he became the 2021 SEC Outdoor champion.

The Jamaica Football Federation has offered its congratulations to former Reggae Boy Wes Morgan, whose side Leicester City defeated a star-studded Chelsea 1-0 to win the FA Cup at Wembley on Saturday.

Youri Tielemans’ long-range strike in the 63^rd minute was enough to give the Foxes a 1-0 victory over their more celebrated rivals.

“We are extremely happy for Wes,” said JFF President Michael Ricketts. “He has been a great soldier for Leicester City and a willing servant for Jamaica. There is no better way to bow out of the professional game than with a prestigious trophy. We wish nothing but the very best for him in the future.”

Morgan hinted at retirement following Saturday’s victory that gave Leicester City their first-ever hold on the trophy.

“Nothing’s been announced yet, I need to discuss it with the club, but I don’t think I’ve got too many more miles on the clock, we’ll say that,” said Morgan who played the last eight minutes of the match after being out with a back injury since December.

 “I wasn’t sure if I was going to make the squad. The gaffer asked me if I could make it on the bench and I said if I’m needed for the last 10 minutes, I’ll be available. We were 1-0 up and the last thing I expected a week ago was to be playing again, but I came on and now I have won the FA Cup.”

The FA Cup is the second major trophy captain Morgan has won with Leicester City. He lifted the English Premier League with the club in 2016.

Morgan made 30 appearances for the Reggae Boyz between 2013 and 2016.

Olympic champion Omar McLeod and Britany Anderson won in impressive fashion at the American Track League meet in California on Saturday.