Roenisha McGregor poses for Legacy Athletics Jamaica (Photo from Legacy Athletics Jamaica).
With the 128th edition of the Penn Relay Carnival right around the corner, hundreds of thousands of spectators will gather to witness over 15,000 track and field athletes compete in the nation’s oldest two-tiered stadium, Franklin Field. Among the field of competitors is Jamaican sprinter and Olympian Roneisha McGregor.
McGregor’s track abilities first caught eyes at the 2017 ISSA Grace Kennedy Boys and Girls Championships, where she was the winner of the Class One 200 meters. Representing Hydel High School for the 17-18 girls division, McGregor clocked a brisk 23.19 time. The invitational, better known as Champs, is an annual Jamaican high school track and field event, notorious for weeding out the country’s top athletic prospects, including eight-time Olympic gold medalist Usain Bolt.
Franklin Field is not new turf for McGregor. In fact, McGregor ran with Hydel High School at the 2017 Carnival where the team set the high school girls 4x400m record at the time in the championship race.
McGregor’s success continued in 2019, when she won silver at the World Championships in the 4x400m mixed relay and bronze in the women's 400m relay. She earned her spot on the Jamaican Olympic team after running her 400m best of 50.02 seconds for third place at the Jamaican Athletics Championships in 2021.
Her Olympic dreams, set to be held in Tokyo, were momentarily paused in 2020 after the International Olympic Committee announced that the Games would be moved to the following year due to the developing global situation in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Jamaican team, composed of McGregor, Janieve Russell, Shericka Jackson, and Candice McLeod, made their presence known at the 2021 Games, qualifying to the women's 4x400 final. As the youngest on the team, McGregor ran the starting leg of the race, helping her country win a bronze medal.
Since then, McGregor has won gold in the World Indoor Championships in the women’s 4x400m relay.
To represent such a fanatic nation at one of track and field’s most prestigious events is a dream come true. But with the Olympics quickly approaching, the stakes of these Penn Relays are even higher for McGregor in order to repeat her success from three years ago. At the Carnival, McGregor will be looking to collect some points to go toward her world ranking as she sets her sights on a plane ticket to Paris.
This race is also an especially meaningful one for Jamaica as this year’s event marks the 60th year of Jamaican participation at the Penn Relays. In 1964, Jamaica debuted at the Carnival in dominating fashion, with a relay team representing Kingston College, taking home gold in the 440-yard relay with a time of 42.7 seconds. The win paved the path for future groups to make the journey up from the Caribbean for the annual competition.
Since then, Jamaica has become a major part of the three-day extravaganza. In fact, the Jamaican flag became the first foreign flag to be flown at Franklin Field. The flying of the flag was initially announced in the lead up to the 2012 Penn Relays to commemorate the country’s 50th anniversary of its independence but quickly became a mainstay for future renditions of the Relays.
The recognition of the Caribbean nation is well-deserved, as previous estimates have concluded that approximately half of the 100,000+ people attending the Relays are Caribbean nationals. In 2010, the arrival of Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt at the Relays led to the event’s largest crowd ever, with the crowd peaking at 54,310 people on Saturday — many of whom made the pilgrimage from Jamaica to see their idol race in person.
The Olympic Development women's 400m race is set to take place on Saturday, April 27 at approximately 3:13 p.m. McGregor headlines a competitive field that also features Tierra Robinson-Jones and Chloe Abbott of the United States.
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