Anthony Foster, Gleaner Writer

Decathlete Maurice Smith. - AP

BEIJING, China:

World Championships decathlon silver medallist Maurice Smith has hinted that he was appointed captain of Jamaica's Olympic team to foster unity among the nation's athletes.

In recent years, it has been widely speculated that the Jamaican team has been divided. At most of the top meets, the various groups could be seen training by themselves, while some athletes would not talk to others.

However, while Smith did not speak about any of these cases, he pointed out that he was chosen to keep the team spirit.

"They said they want me to keep the team spirit be-cause they said I get along with everybody on the team," he said.

So far Smith, who was appointed captain after an MVP group protest at the training camp in Tianjin, said things were now going well.

Not really hard

"The role as captain is not really a hard job ... it's not a lot of things going on that are out of the ordinary, so it will make my job easy," added Smith, who won the 2007 Pan American Games after accumulating 8,241 points in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

With the track-and-field section of the Olympics set to start tomorrow, Smith said: "So far, so good ... everybody seems to be getting along very well."

According to Smith, apart from keeping the unity, he also steps in when any of the athletes have any other difficulties for which they do not want to go to the team's managers.

"They tell me, and I will relate whatever problem (they have)," he said. Smith, however, said his number one focus was on his decathlon event, for which he tallied a national record 8,644 points for second behind Olympic and world-record holder Roman Sebrle of the Czech Republic (8,676 points) at the World Championships in Osaka, Japan, last year.

anthony.foster@gleanerjm.com