Record entries for World Champs
MONTEGO BAY, St James — It is expected that the 14th staging of the IAAF World Championships scheduled to start on August 10 in Moscow, Russia, could be the biggest since the first staging in Sweden in 1983.
A release from the IAAF yesterday said following the deadline for entries on July 29, “no fewer than 206 IAAF Member Federations have confirmed their participation”, beating the 200 nations that took part in Seville, Spain, in 1999, and Berlin, Germany, in 2009.
The release also said the number of athletes expected to take part could be a record, “With a total of 1,974 athletes having been entered (1,106 men and 868 women), the record of participants is also on course to be broken, as the previously most attended Championships in terms of athletes was Berlin 2009 with 1,895.”
Jamaica will be represented by 44 athletes led by defending 200m champion Usain Bolt, the only individual medal winner from the 2011 staging in Deagu, South Korea, named in the team by the JAAA on Monday evening.
Jamaican athletes have won 66 medals over the previous 13 editions of the second largest global single sport event behind the FIFA World Cup.
They have won 10 gold medals, 30 silver and 26 bronze medals. Four individual medallists from the London Olympic Games last year — double sprint gold medal winner Bolt, 200m bronze medallist Warren Weir, 100m champion and 200m silver medallist Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, and 110m hurdler bronze medallist Hansle Parchment have been named in the Jamaican squad.
Jamaica will, however, be missing two defending champions from Daegu — men’s 100m champion Yohan Blake due to injury, and women’s 200m champion Veronica Campbell Brown due to a drug suspension after she returned a positive sample for a stimulant at the Jamaica International Invitational at the National Stadium in May.