Jamaica's Yohan Blake (left) and Shawna Anderson are Jamaica's flag bearers in the 100 metres.
BYDGOSZCZ, Poland - The creme of the crop of Jamaica's top junior athletes (ages 17 to 19 years old) will join a record 182 other countries as the 12th IAAF World Junior Championships gets underway here today in Bydgoszcz, Poland at the newly refurbished Stadion Zdzislaw.

Jamaicans will take part in seven events on the opening day that will see just two finals scheduled, the men's shot put and women's 5,000m, and the heats and semi-finals of the men's and women's 100m races are likely to highlight today's opening day.

The meet will run through to next Sunday, spanning six days and 10 sessions - two sessions on each of the first four and one each on the last
two days.

Jamaican athletes have won a total of 63 medals at the event, which had its first instalment in 1986 in Athens, Greece, including 16 gold medals, 22 silver and 25 bronze medals.


Shawna Anderson
Jamaica's best medal tally of 11 came in 2002 when the meet was hosted in Kingston, while nine medals were won in Seoul, South Korea in 1992 and Grosseto, Italy in 2004 and eight were won twice, in Santiago de Chile in 2000 and 2006 in Beijing, China.

Despite being disqualified from the boys' 17-20 100m final at last month's National Junior Trials (NJT), national junior record holder Yohan Blake will join IAAF World Youth Championships gold medallist Dexter Lee in the men's 100m heats which run off at midday (5:00 am Jamaica time).

Lee, who was third in the Class One Boys Champs 100m and second to Blake in the Under-20 event at CARIFTA Games, won the final at NJT in 10.36 seconds and said then his focus was on taking the gold here in Poland.

Blake, the bronze medal winner in 2006 in Beijing, China, who made the team after being second to St Jago teammate Nickel Ashmeade in the 200m, has a season best 10.20 seconds done in the semi-finals at CARIFTA Games and said after the 100m disqualification he hoped to get the chance to redeem himself.


GOULE. will be the only Jamaican contestant in the 800m and should make it to the semi-finals
Blake, who told a pre-competition press conference yesterday he was aiming to lower his own personal best 10.11 seconds, will run in the eighth and penultimate heat where he should easily get one of the two automatic qualifying places to the quarter-finals.

Lee runs earlier in heat five where he is the only athlete with a sub-10.40 seconds time coming into
the event.

The Edwin Allen High pair of Kaycea Jones and Shawna Anderson will carry the Jamaican flag in the women's 100m as Girls Champs Class Two record breaker and CARIFTA Games finalist Jura Levy of Vere Technical was passed over.
Jones, who will contest the sixth of eight qualifying heats, has improved steadily towards the end of the season to win the event at NJR, running 11.69 in a driving rain storm, while Anderson, who was drawn in the earlier heat, has a season best 11.58 seconds done while winning Class One at Champs.

The final of both events will be run tomorrow.
The heats of the women's 400m will be the first event for the Jamaicans and Herbert Morrison Girls' Champs Class Two and NJT winner Antonique Campbell is expected to accompany Latoya McDermott as the two Jamaican representatives.

Campbell won at NJT with a season best 53.99 seconds, ahead of McDermott's 54.90 seconds. The St Andrew High athlete is the more seasoned, however, and will be seeking to at least equal her silver medal in the one lap event at last year's World Youth Championships in Ostrava, Czech Republic.

Campbell will run in the first heat from lane three where she is expected to advance along with the Ukraine's Yuliya Baraley, who has personal best and season best 52.40 seconds and the United States' Laine Whittaker, who ran 53.25 seconds.

McDermott is in a much tougher heat where she will go up against Cuba's Susana Clement (42.24 seconds) and Zambia's world number three rated Rachel Nachula who has a season best 51.39 seconds.

The top four form each of the five heats and the next four fastest will advance to the next round.

Florida State University (FSU) freshman Kevin Williams and Akino Ming are the duo who will be seeking to be the first Jamaican men to win the gold in the quarter mile since Michael McDonald did in 1994 and the first medallist since Jermaine Gonzales' bronze in 2002 in Kingston.

Williams has a personal best 46.83 seconds this season and is the inform Jamaican, while Ming, who transferred to Kingston College last September, was second at the trials behind schoolmate Rolando Berch at Trials.

Williams is drawn in lane five of the second heat, next to the only sub-46.00 seconds runner in the competition, the USA's Oneil Wilder, who has a personal best 45.54-second run earlier this year.

Ming appears to have his work cut out for him as his 47.60-second is the slowest in heat four in the event which will see the first three in each heat automatically advancing with the fastest losers joining them.

Misha-Gaye DaCosta, Jamaica's only female medallist in the high jump at a global competition when she took the silver in Ostrava last year, will hope to build on this when she takes part in the high jump qualifying.

Since jumping 1.84m last year at the World Juniors, DaCosta's best effort this season was 1.70m at Champs which saw her taking second in Class One on the count back and was fourth at Trials with
only 1.65m.

CARIFTA Games Under-20 record holder Natoya Goule with 2:05.90 minutes will be the only Jamaican contestant in the 800m and should make it to the semi-finals on Wednesday afternoon.

Goule, of Manchester High, failed to get out of the first round of the World Youth Championships last year, despite running a then personal best 2:08.37 seconds, but has been unbeaten all season.

After making it to the final of the World Youths last year, Tarick Batchelor is hoping to be the first Jamaican to medal in the long jump at the World Juniors and the 18-year-old Kingston College sixth former is confident he can pull it off.

Having worked out what he says were "technical flaws" in his form, the 2007 Penn Relays and 2008 Boys' Champs winner says he is ready to finish his junior career in style.