Sport

Jamaica mine six gold medals at CAC

Claston Bernard - file

nassau bahmas

JAMAICA ENJOYED A very good second day at the 20th Central America & Caribbean (CAC) Track & Field Championships at Thomas Robinson Track & Field Stadium yesterday, winning five medals, four gold and a silver.

American-born Dorian Scott and Claston Bernard with two championship records, Lansford Spence's 400m and the women's sprint relay team, all won gold.

Overall Jamaica now have six gold, one silver and three bronze medals. Peta-Gaye Dowdie said they used their greater experience to beat the Chandra Sturrup-led Bahamas in the sprint relay. "We didn't have much time to practise our hand offs, but Bev (McDonald) and I and the other girls (Danielle Browning, Sherri-Ann Brooks) are experienced, so we basically used that," Dowdie, a former National 100m champion said.

Bernard's on the move

Jamaica (43.21) beat Bahamas (43.48) and Cuba (45.07) while the men's team finished fifth in their event in 39.48 seconds.

Meanwhile, Bernard who started the day on 3343 points in the decathlon, won the men's 110m hurdles in 14.55 seconds, then picked up second in the discus (47.44m) with a bandaged right-arm, fourth in the pole vault by clearing (4.30m), by which stage he has 6584 points, ahead of Cuban Alberto Juantorena Jnr (63.81m).

Bernard, the Commonwealth Games champion, came up with impressive performance in the javelin, picking up second with a throw of 54.15m and then smashed countryman Maurice Smith's four-year-old mark of 7755 points with a third place finish in the 1500m in 4:45.96.

In the end, Bernard tallied 7877 points to hold off the challenge of Juantorena Jnr (7672) and Alexis Chivas, also from Cuba (7624). Meanwhile, Scott became Jamaica's second American-born medallist at the Championships. The victory was a sweet for Scott, not only because he broke the Championships record, but more for the fact that he could have won for himself a place on Jamaica's contingent to Helsinki.

The World Championships A standard mark is 20.50m, but he is the only Jamaican to secure a B standard mark ( 20.00m) with his throw of 20.21m, which broke the CAC Championships record of 19.36, held by Luis Delis of Cuba. His winning throw is also a national record.

Meanwhile, Spence who won in 45.29 seconds was happy with his gold running out of lane one. He said his final kick did the trick after he came off the curve with the rest of the field.

Earlier, Andrea Bliss pocketed the women's 100m hurdles silver. Bliss' time of 12.86 seconds, her second best of the season, placed her behind Haitian Nadine Faustin who won in 12.83. Cuban Yahumara Neyra (13.09) was third. Karen Beautle won silver in the women's high jump with a leap of 1.85m. National champion Sheree Francis was fourth with 1.80m. St. Lucia's Lavern Spencer won gold with a championship record leap of 1.94m.

In the men's 110m hurdles, Christopher Pinnock (13.55) and Decosma Wright (13.81) were fifth and seventh respectively. Joel Hdez Reyes ( 13.32) led a Cuban 1-2 with Dayron Robles Planes (13.41) in second.