My brother and I spent every Jan to June watching every single athletics meet from 1975 until I left Ja. in 1989. My brother continued that tradition and now is sitting in Berlin as he has done in Syndey, Beijing and all over the world commentating on Jamaican athletics.
At the time I never knew I was watching the beginning of history. Some see the rise of Jamaican sprinters as sudden, recent and worthy of deeper scrutiny for possible drug usage. We do not.
Slowly the truth about the depth of Jamaica’s sprinting heritage is coming out, but let me relay a few historic points which I believe helped to create the Bolts and Frasers we now see before us.
What do Donavon Bailey, Linford Christie, Ben Johnson and Colin Jackson all have in common?
In the athletics world championship 1983 Jamaican Bertland Cameron won the 400m, yet with all his promise he never achieved any greater victory. Before Bertland, Jamaican school boys were consistently been awarded athletic scholarships to US colleges and Universities. This trend would continue long after Bertland’s success and all had one thing in common. Irrespective of massive success in US domestic competition, mainly the NCAAs Jamaican athletes consistently failed to fulfil their obvious potential once they flew off to the US.
Two Jamaican school boys Raymond Stewart and Greg Meghoo made the national team and won sliver medals in the 1984 Olympics. Note please that Ray Stewart’s was coached by Usian Bolts current coach and that his alma mater, Camperdown High School was know simply as The Sprint Factory. Some will remember Evrod Samuels.
Meanwhile at the top of Old Hope road in Kingston Dennis Johnson the former 100 yard record holder coached a fully home grown sprint relay team named ‘Bolts of Lightning’ who were unbeatable.
G.C Foster Sports College, built by the Cubans began churning out high quality coaches.
By this time there was a growing unhappiness with the return on investment Jamaica was getting from the athletes who left to take up those much sought after scholarships in the US. Among the athletics inner circle the unthinkable was been said, perhaps these scholarships do not provide the best platform for the development of our athletes. Perhaps the US colleges were self serving, burning out our athletes purely for collegiate success.
As in all things money held the key. Could Jamaica support home grown talent? Could Jamaica nurture and support world class athletes, feed them, outfit them, and support overseas travel to compete on the international stage?
The money was the final piece of the Jigsaw. Natural talent, mixed with one of the best and most competitive school athletics programmes, met with the realisation that Nuh wey no better dan yard and finally we dropped the ‘every ting from foreign is better’ attitude.
You and the rest of the world are now witnessing the end product. A huge percentage of the Jamaican track and field team are home grown. Many have chosen to stay home and develop rather than take up US scholarships. Bolt and Powell are examples of this, so are the top women sprinters. In a unique twist UK sprinters now attend Jamaican sprint camps in Jamaica.
Drugs
It would be wrong of me to write a piece about athletics and not mention drugs. The US and the UK have many times worse records on drug taking than all of the Caribbean combined. It may be fair to say only the former East Germany have a worse record. The elephant in the room during any conversation on drugs is Flo Jo, a US athlete. Merlene Ottey, the Jamaican queen of sprints watched painfully as Marian Jones ran drugged fuelled races.
Meanwhile during the Beijing Olympics Jamaican athletes were tested and re-tested beyond normal limits. And an injured Tyson Gay can run 9.71. I do not believe Gay is on drug so this tells me that Bolt is not a superman, but merely someone who has taken his sport to another level resetting perceptions of what can be achieved and in doing so has pulled others of great talent with him.
I hope the naysayers will begin to accept that Jamaica has the heritage, depth and motivation to produce the athletes we have without drugs.
So to Carl Lewis and others I say shut up and take your kicking like men.
PS Thanks to Puma, Victoria Mutual, Milo, C&W, Digicel, D&G and all the many other sponsors who never gave up on Ja.
From www.nottheadlinenews.com
