Leg­endary Trinida­di­an sprint­er Ato Boldon be­lieves that if Ja­maica does not do more to as­sist its pro­fes­sion­al ath­letes, they will lose them to coun­tries which are will­ing to of­fer them lu­cra­tive con­tracts to switch al­le­giance.

His com­ments have come fol­low­ing re­cent re­ports that four of its pre­mier ath­letes; dis­cus throw­er Ro­je Stona, long jumper Wayne Pin­nock, shot put­ter Ra­jin­dra Camp­bell and World Un­der-20 triple jump record hold­er Jay­don Hi­b­bert, were in the process of com­plet­ing a move to Türkiye.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, Türkiye is of­fer­ing a US$500,000 sign­ing bonus, month­ly stipends, and six-fig­ure in­cen­tives for podi­um fin­ish­es at ma­jor cham­pi­onships.

Speak­ing dur­ing an in­ter­view on Is­ports on i95.5 FM on Sat­ur­day, the 51-year-old Boldon, a four-time Olympic medal­list, said the Ja­maica Ath­let­ics Ad­min­is­tra­tive As­so­ci­a­tion (JAAA) need­ed to ur­gent­ly find a so­lu­tion.

“Their big­ger prob­lem now is that peo­ple have grown so frus­trat­ed with how Ja­maica sup­ports their pro ath­letes that they are los­ing all these ath­letes to Turkey.

“When you see what Turkey is of­fer­ing, you re­alise that it’s not go­ing to be a 2025 prob­lem, it’s go­ing to be an ‘it start­ed in 2025 prob­lem'” Boldon said.

“So now a coun­try like Türkiye, and don’t for­get there are oth­er coun­tries that have a his­to­ry like Bahrain and oth­ers, but there are oth­er coun­tries who that is their na­tion­al pol­i­cy, so Ja­maica has oth­er prob­lems on the hori­zon.”

Boldon said while he did not be­lieve the sit­u­a­tion was “an emer­gency” for Ja­maica just yet, he said Ja­maica need­ed to treat their pro­fes­sion­al ath­letes bet­ter.

He ex­plained that while it was the norm for ath­letes to switch al­le­giance, Ja­maica could ill af­ford to lose its world class ath­letes be­cause of its small­er pool.

“I don’t think it is an emer­gency for Ja­maica yet, but I know they are al­ready hav­ing meet­ings about it and it is clear­ly some­thing that has to be ad­dressed. I think they are go­ing to have to get the pri­vate sec­tor to come and maybe cre­ate a fund or some­thing for their ath­letes be­cause this is the era of NIL [name, im­age and like­ness].

“These kids are not like us. They don’t be­lieve that they have to be broke while every­one else around us is rich. So, these kids are look­ing around and go­ing, ‘If Ja­maica doesn’t care enough to sup­port me as an ath­lete win­ning medals for them, then maybe this one-way al­le­giance and sup­port is for the birds,'” Boldon said.

“The truth is that there are tons of ath­letes from Amer­i­ca who are run­ning for Liberia and oth­er coun­tries now and there are tons of Amer­i­cans who have changed al­le­giance to Nige­ria.

“So, the truth is that if four Ja­maicans switched that is an emer­gency in Ja­maica, but it is not an emer­gency to the IOC (In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee) or to World Ath­let­ics,” he added.

CMC