Controversy is nothing new for Jamaica »

Jamaica's rich talent in track and field will be on the forefront this weekend at the World Athletics Championships in Berlin, Germany, which is set to begin on Saturday, and for the following eight days the country's athletes will be in the spotlight.

Like last year in Beijing, controversy has hit the Jamaica camp. In Beijing it was the no-show of the MVP athletes at the training camp, and once again most of the top athletes from that camp did not turn up as scheduled at the pre-Worlds training camp.

Before this, there had been controversy surrounding a banned substance found in the urine sample of five of the country's athletes.

These controversial happenings, especially in recent times, are not new as something seems to go wrong everytime these major events come around.

Who can forget Sydney, Australia, in 2000 at the Olympic Games where the Merlene Ottey-Peta-Gaye Dowdie fiasco caused a big uproar. There, several of the Jamaican athletes demonstrated in the Olympic Village, and this was only halted when the athletes were threatened with expulsion from the Games by the International Olympic Committee.

There are many who are asking if this present fiasco will affect the medal chances of the Jamaicans. However, the country's athletes sometimes seem to thrive on these negatives, as they did in China last year.

After the rumblings in China the Jamaicans, led by Usain Bolt, produced its best-ever showing at a major championships, and come Berlin, we could once again see another Beijing-like performance.

Failed to finish

One of the major casualties in Beijing was the women's 4x100 metres relay team which had problems in the final and failed to finish. Once again, this could have another bad affect on the relay team as for success in any 4x100 metres relay, chemistry is needed.

It does not matter if four of the fastest runners in the world are on one team. If there is no practice before then this could cause disaster.

The Bahamas' female team, on two occasions, have shown that with practice one will succeed, as they have won at two major championships despite having inferior teams to Jamaica and the United States.