Jamaica’s Long March to Greatness

The People’s Republic of China prepared meticulously for the coming together of the world’s athletic elite. One would expect for the weeks of August as the world’s athletes competed in earnest, all over the world, swords would have temporarily turned into ploughshares. After the Georgian attack on South Ossettia, the Russian army has invaded Georgian territory. Facing impeachment, Pervez Musharraf, the President of Pakistan has stepped down. Despite the gnashing of teeth in world politics, the Olympic spectacle in Beijing marches on unabated.

Countries have always used the accomplishments of their athletes to foster national pride. Both China and the United States are mega-powers and are competing for medal supremacy.

Communist East Germany from the 1950s identified athletic talent from an early age and through training facilities and competition, nurtured that talent with the expectation that achievement in the international arena would bring glory to the nation.

The Cubans followed the pathway of the East Germans and over the five decades of the Cuban revolution, achieved their fair share of Olympic glory. The Cubans excelled in boxing and produced a number of legendary pugilists. What marred the Cuban accomplishments, were the unwillingness of so many of their athletes to return to the spartan-like existence which prevailed in Fidel Castro’s Cuba.

The Chinese has taken a similar approach. Their world class hurdler, basketball players, divers, swimmers and gymnasts are national heroes. The Chinese 110 meters hurdler and world record holder, Liu Xiang, tried gallantly to compete in the 29th Olympiad but had to be scratched because of injury to an Achilles heel. The Chinese gymnasts who did not live up to expectations were moved to tears. In the world of international athletics, there is much joy in victory and much sorrow in defeat.

The state is not directly involved in the preparing or selecting of athletes in the United States Olympic team but the performance of the American athlete is obviously a matter of national pride. President Bush journeyed to Beijing to cheer on American athletes. His counterpart in the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin, at the same time that Russian troops were humiliating the Schavagilli’s military, he was cheering on the Russian athletic elite.

For a world spectacle, the American media coverage has been atrocious. The American media do not cover the Olympics. They cover the American athletes in the Olympics. World Cup Soccer which is also an international spectacle is held every four years but the American coverage has been consistently more comprehensive. ABC and its affiliates show live every World Cup match. NBC which has the monopoly rights for the feed for the 29th Olympiad Games covers essentially the performance of American athletes and the other folks who are participating are regulated to the periphery.

NBC’s objective is to maximize the fee for commercials in prime time where the rating will be greatest. In this age of instant communication and immediate gratification, the viewer must wait hours after the actual event to see the belated feed. Caribbean folks living in the United States must await telephone calls from fellow compatriots living in Canada, Japan and those domiciled in the region.

The American need for athletic heroes was apparent from the inception of the Olympics with the spotlight on the American swimmer, Michael Phelps. Phelps emerged with 8 gold medals to unseat Mark Spitz who had amassed 7 gold medals in a previous Olympics.

The Phelps long march is a remarkable story. As a child, he was diagnosed with an anti-deficit attention span. His remarkable mother, a principal of a school in Baltimore recognized that swimming served as a coping mechanism for her highly energized son. This professional woman with a passion for education, spent many hours as a single mother traveling to meets that led to the development of his aquatic prowess.

The 29th Olympiad in Beijing has brought to the fore the genius of the Jamaican athlete. America is a nation of 300 million. China is a nation of 1.3 billion. Jamaica is a nation of 2.6 million. In the women’s 100 meters dash, there were three Jamaicans and three Americans who had reached the final. The Jamaican trio of sprinters, Shelly-Ann Fraser, Sherone Simpson and Kerron Stewart aced the race and finished with one gold and two silver medals, respectively. What an incredible feat.

Equally remarkable, Usain Bolt won the 100 meters dash running away from the field with a world record time of 9.69 seconds. Asafa Powell and Michael Frater, who had made it to the final, finished fifth and sixth.

In the 29th Olympiad, Jamaican athletes will leave Beijing with the most medals amassed by any Jamaican Olympic squad since 1948 when the country began sending athletes to the Game. Jamaica is expected to medal in the 200 meters male and female and the 4 x 100 meters male and female. We will be in the hunt for gold in the 400 meters hurdles for women.

When Jamaica competed in the 1948 Olympics in London, the Jamaican contingent made the choice to compete as an independent entity rather than casting one’s lot with the British Empire. Arthur Wint won the 400 meters gold and Herb McKenley won the silver. Jamaica was slated to win the 4 x 400 but Arthur Wint pulled a muscle and failed to finish the race.

The same contingent returned in 1952 for the Helsinki Games in Finland. Herb McKenley lost the gold to Lindy Remigino in the photo finish of the 100 meters dash. McKenley won another silver after he lost to George Rhoden in the 400 meter final. And the team of Les Laing, Arthur Wint, Herb McKenley and George Rhoden set a world record in winning the gold in the 4 x 400 meters. In both the 1948 and 1952 Olympics, Arthur Wint won the silver medal in the 800 meters, finishing behind Mal Whitfield of the United States, consecutively. All of this was accomplished before Jamaica became an independent nation in 1962.

Jamaica’s yearning for gold became more elusive in 1956, 1960 and 1964. The sprint factory production line produced Lenox “Billy” Miller who won a silver medal in the men’s 100 meters final in Mexico City, Mexico. Billy” Miller passed the baton to Donald Quarrie. In the Montreal Games, Haseley Crawford of Trinidad and Tobago took the gold in the 100 meters sprint and Donald Quarrie returned Jamaica to the gold standard by winning the 200 meters sprint in Montreal.

Merlene Ottey made her Olympic debut in Moscow in 1980, the year the Americans boycotted the Olympics to protest the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. Ottey won the bronze in the 100 meters. In the Seoul Olympics in 1988, Grace Jackson earned a silver medal in the final of the 200 sprint. Gold kept eluding the ageless Merlene Ottey. At the Olympic Games in Atlanta, U.S.A., she won silver medals in the 100 and 200 meters. Deon Hemmings, the Jamaican hurdler won the gold in the 400 meters.

Asafa Powell was the favourite in the 100 meters in Athens, Greece but Asafa has been plagued with the tendency to weaken as the meet progresses and in the final, like a petal, he withered. Veronica Campbell struck gold in the 200 meters and demonstrated her tenacity when she stepped on the world stage.

Jamaican athletes have reached the mountain top in the Olympics of 2008 in Beijing. The athletes will be showered with praise but this enviable record in track and field would not have been possible without the superb efforts of the array of dedicated coaches and administrators. The panoply of meets serves as nurturing grounds for the development of great athletes in Jamaica. Track and field in Jamaica has produced an array of coaching generals who have been instrumental in spurring on the achievements of our Olympians. After he retired from his illustrious career as an Olympian, Herb McKenley returned to Jamaica and spent most of his life dedicated to the development of Jamaican athletes. A prodigy of Herb McKenley and a former Olympian, Dennis Johnson, institutionalized a sprint factory on the campus of the University of Technology where Usain Bolt, Asafa Powell and Shelly Ann Fraser were given an opportunity to achieve greatness. Jamaica’s remarkable track and field program needs to be studied and replicated in other aspects of Jamaica’s national life.
 

 

2008 Olympics in Beijing, the Jamaica Powerhouse in Athletics

It is nothing less than phenomenal that a country as small as Jamaica, with a population of 2.7 million, should create such electricity in the Olympic games being held in Beijing, China.

Some would understandably view it as shocking to see young Usain Bolt at 21 years old claiming the title as the “fastest man in the world” with such ease in a new world record of 9.69 seconds in the 100 meters. Then to follow this with a stunning sweep of the medals in the race for the title of the “fastest woman in the world” (Gold – 21-year old Shelly-Ann Fraser; silver – Sherone Simpson, 24 years old; with yet another silver in the same event going to 24-year-old Kerron Stewart). All this provide vindication enough that these young Jamaicans are not scared of the big occasion in front of tens of thousands in attendance, plus over one billion watching on worldwide television. After all, it is not without concrete evidence that Jamaica goes by the sobriquet, “the sprint factory.”

People familiar with Jamaica’s track and field success can point to the fact that from the country’s initial entry in the Olympic games it reaped gold (Arthur Wint in the 400 meters in London). This was followed with more gold in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, when Jamaica became the first country to defeat the United States in the men’s 4X400 meters relay, setting a world record in the process, as well as George Rhoden’s world record run in winning the 400-metres at the same Olympics.

Winning any medal at the Olympic games, much less gold, is no easy feat. In fact, Jamaica did not win another gold medal until 24 years after, when the outstanding sprinter Donald Quarrie won the 200 meters in the Montreal games in 1976. Another 20 years would pass before Jamaica would win another gold medal, this time with young Deon Hemmings winning the women’s 400 meters hurdle at the Atlanta Olympics, in the process becoming the first Caribbean woman to win a gold medal at these games.

In describing Jamaica’s sweep in the women’s 100 meters, the NBC commentator remarked that Jamaica seems to be “churning out these young champions.” After all, both Bolt and Fraser are part of Jamaica’s youth movement in track and field. And both, displaying the “care-free” nature of youth, seemed so unperturbed at the starting blocks. Yes, “little but tallawah,” but demonstrating the time tested work ethic and values of hard work, sacrifice and perseverance.

Humble to a fault, these young Jamaican stars know only too well that they carry the faith and pride of a proud and resilient people, whose history provides compelling evidence of succeeding against the odds.

Jamaica’s success on the world track and field stage is born out of the country’s highly competitive junior program. There is no track meet in the world like the annual high school championships, where thousands gather to witness four days of high spirited competition in a fever-pitched atmosphere where bragging rights based on school colors take precedents over from whatever other achievements by alumni of the competing schools. And Jamaica’s junior athletes know only too well that, buoyed by the continuing success of the country in international competitions, failure is not an option to a tough and demanding people. And these youngsters are woefully aware of the country’s rich athletics tradition, a mantle that is successfully carried from generation to generation and now rests on their young shoulders.

A case in point; both Stewart and Simpson were members of Jamaica’s wining 4X100 meter relay team in 2002 at the 2002 junior world championships held in Kingston, Jamaica. Usain Bolt, as well as several other members of the 2002 youth team are now members of the senior team in China.

But Jamaica has a succession of junior athletes with medal-winning performances in the Olympics. To wit: Raymond Stewart (one of the premier sprinters that the country has produced) and Gregory Meghoo both won silver medals in the 4x100-relay at the 1984 Olympic in Los Angeles. Merlene Ottey, Sherone Simpson and Veronica Campbell-Brown won all Olympic medals while still teenagers. Donald Quarrie’s first Olympic venture came as a sixteen –year-old school boy at CamperdownHigh School. Jamaica has for a long time been sending high school athletes to big international meets, based on both accomplishment and potential.

To see the flag and to hear the national anthem at these international games inspire Jamaicans in the Diaspora to support programs in Jamaica. One only has to attend the annual Penn Relays in Philadelphia to see the passion and emotion by the thousands of Jamaicans, adorned in the national colors and hoisting national flags of various sizes, to get a feel of the support that fuel these young athletes.


The fact of the matter is simply that Jamaica, despite its modest size and a paucity of resources, and oftentimes an embarrassing lack of funding, invests heavily in its junior programs, which discover kids running competitively y from as early as 6 years old even running bare-foot on the all weather track at the National Stadium. It is these same young athletes who become Olympic champions.


The audacity of purpose? That’s how champions are made!

(Ambassador Basil K. Bryan served as Jamaica’s Consul General in New York from1998 -2007)