Overview of the Caribbean medal performance at the 2018 IAAF World U20 Championships in Tampere, Finland

Peter B. Jordens Curaçao, July 16, 2018

Introduction

The 17th biennial World Under 20 Championships of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) were held in Tampere, Finland, from July 10 to 15, 2018. The present overview summarizes the performance of the Caribbean nations that won medals at Tampere 2018.

The overview takes into account both the absolute medal count of a country and the medal count per capita (i.e. the medal count per population size of the country in question).

The main sources used for this overview are https://www.iaaf.org/competitions/iaaf-world- u20-championships and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_IAAF_World_U20_Championships .

Medal count as a region

As a region the Caribbean won 18 medals of which 5 were gold, 6 silver and 7 bronze. These medals were won by three of the Caribbean nations present in Tampere: (12), Cuba (5) and Colombia (1).

G = gold medals G S B T WT S = silver medals Jamaica 4 5 3 12 7.25 B = bronze medals Cuba 1 1 3 5 2.25 T = total medals Colombia 0 0 1 1 0.25 WT = weighted total TOTAL 5 6 7 18 9.75 Pop = population size

It is notable that Trinidad and Tobago did not win a medal at Tampere 2018, whereas they have almost always won at least one medal at recent World U20 Championships.

The 18 Caribbean medals represent 13.5% of the total of 133 medals that were won at Tampere 2018. This is a relatively high regional medal count, bearing in mind that the total population of the three Caribbean countries that won medals in Tampere constitutes only 1.3% of the total population of all the 43 countries that won medals there.

This year’s medal count of 18 is comparable to the region’s performance at the previous IAAF World U20 Championships: 19 medals at the Championships held in Bydgoszcz (Poland) in 2016. This year’s medal count is slightly higher than the average Caribbean accomplishment of 15.5 medals at the World U20 Championships of the past 20 years.

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The following chart shows the development of the region’s total medal count during the past eleven World U20 Championships, from 1998 to 2018.

The individual medal winners

Medals, events, names

Jamaica : 4 gold 5 silver 3 bronze Gold Women’s 100m Gold Women’s 200m Briana Williams (Championships record) Gold Men’s 110m hurdles Damian Thomas Gold Men’s discus throw Kai Cheng Silver Men’s 400m Christopher Taylor Silver Men’s 4x100m relay Men’s relay team: Xavier Nairne, Christopher Taylor, Jhevaughn Matherson, and Michael Stephens Silver Men’s 110m hurdles Orlando Bennett Silver Women’s 100m hurdles Britany Anderson Silver Women’s 400m hurdles Shiann Salmon Bronze Men’s 400m Chantz Sawyers Bronze Women’s 4x400m relay Women’s relay team: Janielle Josephs, Stacey-Ann Williams, Shiann Salmon, and Calisha Taylor Bronze Men’s long jump Wayne Pinnock

Cuba : 1 gold 1 silver 3 bronze Gold Men’s triple jump Jordan A. Díaz (Championships record) Silver Men’s long jump Maikel Y. Vidal Bronze Women’s triple jump Davisleydi Velazco Bronze Women’s hammer throw Yaritza Martínez Bronze Women’s discus throw Silinda Oneisi Morales

Colombia : 1 bronze Bronze Women’s high jump María Fernando Murillo

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Outstanding feats

Jamaica’s performance of 12 medals at Tampere 2018 was their best ever, surpassing the 11 medals that they won in 2002, when Jamaica hosted the World U20 Championships in Kingston.

Jamaica’s Briana Williams arrived in Tampere as the youngest entrant (less than four months past her 16 th birthday) but left as its most memorable star. Jamaica’s newest sensation became only the fourth woman to achieve the 100m/ 200m sprint double at the World U20 Champ- ionships, joining two other Caribbean women ―Jamaica’s (who did it in 2000) and ’ (2012)― and Bulgaria’s (2006). Williams is the youngest woman ever to win the 100m sprint at the World U20 Champ- ionships and also the youngest to win the sprint double.

Briana Williams was born on March 21, 2002 in the USA. She attends Northeast High School in Oakland Park near her hometown of Miramar, both located in Broward County, Florida. Her mother, Sharon Simpson, is Jamaican; her late father, Steven Williams, was American. In March 2018, Briana Williams told the Jamaica Observer : “When I was younger, I would always travel to Jamaica to see my family and I fell in love with the country at first sight, and growing up I would always watch the Jamaican athletes running on TV and it amazed me. So that spurred the decision to represent Jamaica rather than USA.”1 Her coach is , a four-time Olympic medal winner for Trinidad and Tobago, whose mother is Jamaican. Ato Boldon and Brianna Williams

Country rankings

The IAAF traditionally ranks the medal-winning countries according to the number of gold medals won. This way of ranking tends to privilege the larger countries. Here is the top 6:

G S B T WT 1 Kenya 6 4 1 11 8.25 2 Jamaica 4 5 3 12 7.25 3 USA 3 8 7 18 8.75 4 Ethiopia 3 2 4 9 5.00 5 Great Britain & N.I. 3 1 3 7 4.25 6 R. of South Africa 3 0 1 4 3.25

All countries in the top 6, except Jamaica, have a population that is larger than 50 million. Jamaica has 2.7 million inhabitants.

1 ‘US-born sprinter Briana Williams on target with Jamaican dreams’, online article credited to the Jamaica Observer, March 28, 2018, https://www.stlucianewsonline.com/us-born-sprinter-briana- williams-on-target-with-jamaican-dreams .

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If instead the countries are ranked by medal count per capita, a very different picture emerges.2 The following table shows the ranking by weighted total medal count per capita (WT/Pop). Here Jamaica places first, while Cuba (with a population of 11.2 million) places fifth. On this alternative list, Kenya ranks 8 th and the USA 28 th .

Pop G S B T WT WT/Pop 1 Jamaica 2,728,864 4 5 3 12 7.25 2.657 2 Moldova 3,550,900 1 0 0 1 1.00 0.282 3 Ireland 4,792,500 0 2 0 2 1.00 0.209 4 New Zealand 4,889,930 1 0 0 1 1.00 0.205 5 Cuba 11,221,060 1 1 3 5 2.25 0.201 6 Qatar 2,685,053 0 1 0 1 0.50 0.186 7 Bahrain 1,451,200 0 0 1 1 0.25 0.172 8 Kenya 50,950,879 6 4 1 11 8.25 0.162

2 The source used for population is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population .

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