KINGSTON, Ja­maica – In a sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ment for in­ter­na­tion­al ath­let­ics, Ja­maican Olympic medal­lists Ro­je Stona and Ra­jin­dra Camp­bell have of­fi­cial­ly an­nounced their de­ci­sion to switch al­le­giance to Türkiye.

The move will pre­vent them from rep­re­sent­ing Ja­maica at ma­jor glob­al events for the next three years, in­clud­ing the up­com­ing World Ath­let­ics Cham­pi­onships in Tokyo and the 2028 Los An­ge­les Olympics.

Stona, who made his­to­ry as Ja­maica’s first Olympic cham­pi­on in a throw­ing event with his dis­cus gold at the 2024 Paris Games, and Camp­bell, a shot put bronze medal­list, have re­port­ed­ly se­cured lu­cra­tive deals to com­pete un­der the Turk­ish flag.

Sources in­di­cate that both ath­letes are set to re­ceive a US$500,000 sign­ing bonus, month­ly fi­nan­cial sup­port, and ad­di­tion­al six-fig­ure in­cen­tives for podi­um fin­ish­es at ma­jor cham­pi­onships.

This tran­si­tion marks an­oth­er high-pro­file loss for Ja­maica, which has seen sev­er­al top ath­letes de­fect to oth­er na­tions over the past two decades.

Most no­tably, sprint­er Jak Ali Har­vey al­so joined Türkiye back in 2015. The lat­est move aligns with Türkiye’s ag­gres­sive strat­e­gy to strength­en its Olympic medal prospects through nat­u­ral­i­sa­tion, with mul­ti­ple Ja­maican ath­letes re­port­ed­ly be­ing ap­proached in re­cent weeks.

CMC