JAMAICA DROPPED THE BATON (again)!

Day 8 of the World Athletics Championships marked deja vu for Jamaica. The 4x100m relay heat by the men who were the favourites in the race was on its way. And Ackeem Blake had started out strong, passing the baton to Oblique Seville, who then blazed and left the baton with Ryiem Forde, the third leg runner. But that’s where things went wrong. A potential gold medal team then messed up the last exchange, and it became a nightmare.

Jamaica was performing well with the first two runners passing the baton flawlessly. But the play struck upon the last word. The commentator remarked, “The Jamaicans have had an absolute disaster.” Well, exactly 30 seconds into the relay, the third leg runner, Ryiem Forde, extended his arm to hand the baton to the anchor leg, Kishane Thompson, who picked up pace too soon and reached out with his hand backward to grab the baton. But there was a mix-up between the two. While it looked like Forde had nearly thrust the baton in Thompson’s hand at the right time, the baton actually never reached Thompson. 

Amid the miscommunication, the handoff between Forde and Thompson could never be completed, and the baton fell on the track. Reflecting on what happened during the last changeover, the commentator said, “He [Kishane Thompson] never got a chance” to fly to the finish. In an instant, the men from Jamaica in the 4x100m race were out of the race with a DNF as they failed to finish the semi-finals on Saturday. However, this wasn’t the first time this year that a baton betrayed Jamaica.

Earlier, at the 2025 World Athletics Relays in Guangzhou, the men’s team faced a similar heartbreak. Rohan Watson, Julian Forte, Yohan Blake, and Kishane Thompson had a promising start. However, during the second baton exchange between Julian Forte and Yohan Blake, the baton was dropped, causing the team to fail to finish the race. This mishap led to their disqualification from the heat. Yet, there’s a silver lining for Jamaican fans in the World Athletics Championships in 2025.

Kishane Thompson’s relay hiccup didn’t stop Jamaica’s sprinters from stealing the show

The women’s 4x100m team in Jamaica performed fairly well at the 2025 World Athletics Championship in Tokyo.

Well, Natasha Morrison, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, Tina Clayton, and Shericka Jackson set a season best. Guess the time? It was 41.80 seconds in heat 1 and easily made it through to the final. Second came Spain (42.53), France (42.71), and the Netherlands (43.62), with Chile (44.07) and Italy (49.41) picking up the pack. But. Australia failed to finish, and Belgium was disqualified.

But what is worth knowing is the baton work of Jamaica was also smooth-flowing, and the reaction time of 0.159 seconds shocked the fans.  This was the same team that had been beaten by the US in gold by a very narrow margin in the city of Budapest two years ago. But… the magic didn’t stop at relays.

In the 100m run in men, Oblique Seville swept the scene with the personal best 9.77 seconds. The silver was won by Kishane Thompson with 9.82 seconds. And we should not leave out Shericka Jackson. She also won the bronze in the women’s 200m with 22.18 seconds to remind the world that the talent in Jamaica is deep. In the case of Jamaica, it is a tale of hopelessness and optimism: the men fall, yet the women stand up. And in relaying, one baton makes all the difference.