Jamaica expects more from athletic performance in Beijing

Jamaican officials expect the country's "illustrious" performance in the 15th IAAF world championships in Beijing will result in greater national development and the country's international popularity.

In the world championships which concluded on Sunday, athletes from the tiny Caribbean island garnered seven gold medals, including men's 100m, 200m, 4x100m, women's 100m, 4x100m, 4x400m, and women's 100m hurdles, two silver medals and three bronze.

This performance made the sprinting power house the second on the medal list to Kenya, beating the its northern neighbor the United Sates to the third for the first time.

"I am so proud of the illustrious performance of all my children during the entire championships," said Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller, who is also the country's minister of sport, in a statement available on Monday.

"Jamaica continues to be blessed with the greatest athletics tradition in the world supported by our supremely talented world class athletes, great coaches and other support staff, committed and competent sporting administrators and a supportive public," she added.

The prime minister expects her country's athletic accomplishment will turn into the inspiration for national development.

"In the journey for greater national development, the entire nation can take inspiration from the examples of hard work, discipline, teamwork and determination demonstrated yet again by Jamaica's athletes," she said.

Meanwhile, Minister of Tourism and Entertainment Wykeham McNeill highlighted Jamaica's performance at world championships as "considerable and positive" impact on the country's international popularity.

"The outstanding performance of our athletes in Beijing has had a tremendous effect on Brand Jamaica. The eyes of the world were on our athletes, especially Usain Bolt and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, and as a result there was a greater awareness about Jamaica," he said.

"The promotional space which we established dubbed Jamaica House Beijing provided the opportunity to leverage the popularity of Jamaica's athletes to market our destination," he added.

McNeill accompanied by other tourism officials stayed in Beijing for five days to participate in activities aimed at marketing destination Jamaica during the IAAF World Championships.

During the visit, they met with leading travel and tourism stakeholders to explore opportunities to benefit the island's tourism sector and increase visitor arrivals from Asia, according to a government release on Monday.

As part of its strategy to attract visitors from the immense Chinese visitor market in February 2014, Jamaican government approved the conditional waiving of visa requirements for Chinese nationals traveling to Jamaica for tourism purposes within periods of 30 days or less.

Earlier this year, a world cruise tour saw some 1,000 Chinese visitors arrive in Ocho Rios, a tourist city on the north coast of Jamaica, the single largest number of Chinese visitors to arrive in the island ever via cruise.

Recalling Usain Bolt's victory to defend his 100m and 200m titles several days ago and his equally good performance in 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, McNeill said "it's good to hear reggae music back in the Birds Nest and Usain has again put Jamaica on the front pages all across the globe."

"It was an opportunity to utilize this sort of popularity to engage the travel industry in China," he added. Endi