June 29, 2024
KINGSTON, Jamaica — Traves Smikle won his third straight and sixth national men’s discus throw title after a fierce competition at the Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association’s national championships at the National Stadium on Saturday, throwing 67.08m.
Smikle, who will also be competing at his third Olympics after London in 2012 and Tokyo in 2021, had his biggest throw in the final round to stave off competition from Roje Stona, 65.29m and Ralford Mullings, 64.92m, both of whom will join him at the Olympics in Paris.
Mullings and Stona had both thrown over 69.00m this year and Smikle has a season’s best of 67.83m.
National record holder and former Commonwealth Games champion Fedric Dacres, who has been competing internationally for Jamaica since he won the World Youth Championships in 2011 in France, and then took the World Under-20 title in Barcelona in 2012, finished fourth and had failed to get the Olympic Games standard.
-Paul A Reid