Last Friday, we celebrated Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt as the greatest of all time and as “a supreme champion of the Caribbean people and the Caribbean spirit.” With the IAAF World Championships in Beijing coming to an exhilarating climax over the weekend, it seems only logical now to hail the entire Jamaican team, which produced its most successful performance ever at a global track and field meeting.
Jamaica’s final haul of seven gold, two silver and three bronze medals put them second only to Kenya on the Beijing medal table. Kenya captured seven gold medals as well but had four more silver medals to end up with a total of 16 medals to Jamaica’s 12. Whilst the USA won the most precious metal, 18, only six were gold, which meant that the most powerful country in the world suffered the ignominy of being ranked, according to convention, below two developing nations.
In addition, Jamaica’s seven gold medals were as many as Great Britain and Northern Ireland won overall and the small, Caribbean island state ranked way above other traditional athletics powerhouses such as Ethiopia, Germany and Russia.
Just to put things into perspective, Jamaica has a population of 2.8 million people; Kenya has 46 million; the USA has 321 million and is the world’s third most populous country after the People’s Republic of China (1.4 billion), which won one gold medal and nine medals in total; and India (1.2 billion), which won no medals at all. How phenomenal is that?
Jamaica’s reputation as the sprinting capital of the world is not new, however. At the multi-sport London 2012 Olympic Games, it placed fourteenth on the medal table, with four medals of each colour, all in track and field. Indeed, when the track and field medals were disaggregated from the overall medal count, Jamaica actually placed third behind the USA, with nine gold, and Russia, with eight gold, and above Great Britain, which also had four gold but only two other medals, Ethiopia, with three gold, and Kenya, with two gold.
The late development economist, Norman Girvan, a committed regionalist and a proud Jamaican, in analysing the London 2012 medal table, pointed out that the Caribbean, based on its collective track and field performance, led the world in medals per capita across the whole spectrum of sports at London 2012. This time, at Beijing 2015, Jamaica stamped its dominance on the track in resounding style, with grace and power in equal measure; one does not need a spreadsheet to work out that this was probably one of the most convincing displays of athletic might ever seen. Why, the five silver and bronze medals won by The Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago, and Grenada together were not even needed to make the case that the English-speaking Caribbean, with a population of approximately six million people, had once again produced the best per capita performance in the world.
As veteran cricket writer Tony Cozier noted last Sunday, Jamaican and other Caribbean athletes “now defy the size of their Caribbean homelands to literally bestride the world on the track” and are a welcome source of regional pride, filling the massive gap left by the decline in West Indies cricket. And when Jamaican Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller hailed her country’s athletes as inspirations to the entire nation, she might as well have added that they are inspirations to the whole region.
Many theories, ranging from genetics to diet, have been put forward for the Jamaicans’ supremacy in sprinting and there can be no doubt that there is incredible natural talent on the island. But, as we have learnt all too painfully in cricket, talent without a nurturing system, an enabling environment and proper management, can all too easily come to naught. In Jamaica, as Mr Cozier succinctly puts it, “athletic eminence is derived principally from a strong schools programme that culminates in annual championships, known simply as ‘Champs.’”
It is the system, built up over the years, founded on natural talent, respect for a proud history of excellence, community support, public and private funding, world class facilities and coaching, and sound management, which guarantees top performances. It all represents an investment of trust, hard work and money that pays incalculable returns in the building of national pride, inspiration for the future and the burnishing of the Jamaican brand in the global competition for tourism and investment. It is a system worthy of emulation in a variety of endeavours across the region.