FORMER Olympic medallist Grace Jackson is urging coaches and administrators to learn more about the human body, as it will help identify what sport an athlete will be successful in.

Jackson, head of sports and facilities at the University of the West Indies at the St Augustine Campus, was speaking at the TT Olympic Committee Sport Industry TT Conference at the Hyatt Regency in Port of Spain, on Thursday.

Jackson spoke alongside managing director of Bornan Sports Technology Roberto Garcia Riopedre and director and CEO of Caribbean Ideas Limited Brevard Nelson during a panel discussion called Cutting Edge Technology in this Digital Age – Opportunities and Threats.

Jackson, who copped silver at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, in the women’s 200-metre sprint, said, “Biomechanics is very important. You see those basketballers when they jump in the air and they stay up there and you wonder, ‘How on earth they do that?’ Because they go and test and they know how long their hamstrings and their quads are. The numbers help them and they know what kind of work they need to do to be able to get to that stage.”

Jackson said athletes who get injured regularly may not be competing in the sport conducive to their abilities.

“If you are somebody that the minute you go out there and run and you start getting cramps I might say let’s get you tested and see if you are in the right sport or let me check and see if you are in the right event (in track and field).

If they start to do the checks you might find that their legs are longer than is expected for their height and then they will say, ‘Well maybe you are better in jumping than running’.”””

The former Jamaican athlete called on the coaches to improve their knowledge of their athletes. “The coaches have to be technical, they have to understand what it is we have found persons at the university that are in one sport and we said ‘No (you could try something else). They went into swimming instead of basketball or netball and they are so good at it it is being able to do the work, do the research.”

Biomechanic labs are used in countries to help maximise athletes potential. Jackson wants TT to start implementing this in TT.

Identify those labs, learn about it and bring it here which is the drive that I have. I do see when I go to Tobago, when I am here, I see natural talent here in Trinidad that I will like to be able to do testing to see where do they belong achieving that objective of ten gold by 2024 I think that it is possible. This is part of the work in ensuring that associations identify the talent and work with the talent in a very specific way to be able to generate the response that you would like to get.