RBSC

**Mosiah** · August 22, 2008, 07:26 AM

Jesse Owens did not set world records in winning his events.

**Sir X** · August 22, 2008, 07:34 AM

Sprinting in the blood of Jamaica's champions

</EM>
Be it the school races, the yams or the reggae, the island has always punched above its weight.
By David Usborne
Thursday, 21 August 2008

GETTY IMAGES
Shelly-Ann Fraser also won gold for Jamaica in the women's 100 metres

enlarge

Related Articles

Print
Email

SearchSearch Go
Independent.co.uk Web Bookmark & Share

What are these?

Change font size: A | A | A

As Jamaica celebrates the historic second gold medal Usain Bolt won yesterday and the country's other track medals in Beijing, including Shelly-Ann Fraser's gold in the women's 100 metres, the rest of the world had a question: how has the little island, with a population of three million, done it?

There is a history of producing medal winners in track events going as far back as the London Games of 1948. Each of those winners inspired young people in Jamaica, for whom the paths out of poverty were few. It has also engendered a culture where excelling at running is as important to Jamaicans as being good at baseball is to Cubans and football to Brazilians.
Yet the foundations for this fast show were laid as long ago as 1910, when Champs, an event designed to discover and develop the best school sprinters, was launched. Now it is the island's flagship sporting occasion and attracts crowds upwards of 30,000. Children as young as five start sprinting and all Jamaica's fastest athletes have been through this system.
Scholars of the Jamaican sports industry also point to Dennis Johnson for having done more than anyone to integrate sports – particularly track and field – into the university curricula and to impose structure and discipline into the training of the island's best hopes. Much of Jamaica's success might not have happened but for Johnson, a Jamaican who attended university nearly 50 years ago at San Jose State, in southern California, where he strived on the track under legendary American coach Bud Winter.
Johnson took what he learned back to Kingston and introduced sports into the curriculum of University of Technology for the first time. Offering would-be runners the chance to train and learn at the same time is what made all the difference, he says now. "You need an education," Johnson said this week. "You need to get help. I received all those things at San Jose."
It meant also that runners who saw the chance of success on the world stage did not feel compelled to leave the island and compete on behalf of other nations. They used to go to the US mostly, while Linford Christie headed for England and Donovan Bailey left for Canada. "Everybody went to the States," Johnson said. "We don't need to go to the States any more. We can do it right here. We're doing that as we speak."
There have been other theories for Jamaica's success. Among those celebrating Fraser's extraordinary win – two more Jamaicans tied to share the silver medal, Sherone Simpson and Keron Stewart – was her mother, Maxine Simpson, who stayed at home. Her joy was even greater because as a young woman she was an athlete too, running 100m and 200m. So it goes in Jamaica.
Wellesley Bolt, father of Usain, cites a more unusual reason for the gold rush: the Trelawny yam. A kind of sweet potato, the yams have been cultivated for decades by Jamaicans in the fertile and mineral-rich lowlands of Trelawny. It has long been assigned special nutritious qualities. Fraser, who will be feted alongside Bolt when they return home, has a different thought. "The secret of team's success?" she asked this week. "Reggae power." She might have directed us to the website of the Jamaica Athletic Association to back up her point. It features the following lines from a reggae song: "We've been running ever since we came here, many years ago. Now the whole world wanna know how we running so. They say there must be something in the air, down there in Jamaica, that make Jamaicans run like the wind."
Of the 43 medals Jamaica has won in its Olympic history, 42 have been in track and field, and nearly all of those have gone to sprinters.
Medal Power
Jamaican Success at Beijing 2008:
Men's 100m: Usain Bolt, Gold
Men's 200m: Usain Bolt, Gold
Women's 100m: Sally-Ann Fraser, Gold; Sherone Simpson, Silver (share); Kerron Stewart, Silver (share)
Women's 400m Hurdles: Melaine Walker, Gold
Women's 400m: Shericka Williams, Silver
All of Jamaica's medals at these games have come in the sprints

**Sir X** · August 22, 2008, 07:35 AM

Why the Jamaicans are running away with sprint golds in Beijing

Story Highlights

Jamaica has bountiful talent and has developed it properly on the track
The Olympic team is finally keeping its top talent at home to race internationally

setActiveStyleSheet( CNN_FONT_COOKIE ? CNN_FONT_COOKIE : null );
Jamaica's Veronica Campbell-Brown seized Olympic gold in the 200 meters Thursday.
Bill Frakes/SI

document.cnnAdInterstitial = ( document.cnnAdInterstitial == undefined ? "ist" : "" ); document.cnnAdTile = (document.cnnAdTile||0) + 1; document.cnnAdRandom = document.cnnAdRandom || Math.ceil(1+1E12*Math.random()); cnnad_createAd( "olympics_summer", "spt=olympics;", 300, 250 );E WIDTH="300" HEIGHT="250" bgcolor=# TYPE="application/x-shockwave-flash" AllowScriptAccess="never">
adsonar_placementId=1380627;adsonar_pid=1176767;ad sonar_ps=-1;adsonar_zw=300;adsonar_zh=175;cnnad_createSL();

By Tim Layden and David Epstein, SI.com
BEIJING -- The short sprints at the Beijing Games have become a showdown between the United States and Jamaica, with Jamaica winning by an Usain Bolt-ian margin. It's the first time since the 1988 Seoul Games a country has captured both the men's (Bolt) and women's 100 and 200 races (Shelly-Ann Fraser and Veronica Campbell-Brown). The sprints are also likely to add to the Jamaican gold medal haul. Both the U.S. men's and women's 4x100-meter relay teams dropped their batons in prelims on Thursday, though the Jamaican teams would have been favored anyway. So how is a country of 2.8 million people sprinting past the mighty Americans? Here are six reasons for the country's sprint dominance in Beijing:
1. Tradition: Think Notre Dame football. UCLA basketball. The Yankees. Before the torch was lit in Beijing, Jamaica had won 41 medals in Olympic track and field, dating back to the first two: Gold and silver by Arthur Wint and Herb McKenley in 1948. Names like Donald Quarrie and Merlene Ottey are holy on the island. In the United States, track and field is a marginal, niche sport that pops its head out of the sand every four years and occasionally produces a superstar. In Jamaica it is not the only sport. Kids play soccer and cricket. But it's a major sport. When Sports Illustrated visited the island in late spring for a feature story on Asafa Powell and Usain Bolt, dozens of small children showed up for a Saturday morning youth track practice. That was impressive. That they were all wearing spikes was stunning.
2. Staying home: It was widely and correctly reported that Bolt's 100-meter victory was Jamaica's first gold medal in that event. But other Jamaicans have crossed the line first, wearing other colors: Ben Johnson in 1988 (Canada, and he was later stripped of his gold), Linford Christie in 1992 (Great Britain) and Donovan Bailey in 1996 (Canada). If all of these men had worn green, black and yellow, Bolt's gold would be perceived as only the latest -- albeit the fastest -- in a long line.
3. Staying home, Part II: There is bountiful talent on the island, just like there is bountiful talent in the U.S. The key is in properly developing that talent. For many years, U.S. college coaches have aggressively recruited the Caribbean, including Jamaica. Quarrie went to USC, Ottey to Nebraska, 200 gold medalist Campbell-Brown to Arkansas and Beijing 100-meter co-silver medalist Stewart to Auburn. There are many others. But in recent years, more Jamaican athletes have chosen to stay home. Again, when SI visited in May and watched a practice by the Kingston-based MVP track club, those on the track at 6 a.m. included Powell, Beijing 100-meter co-silver medalist Sherone Simpson, Shelly-Ann Fraser and Beijing 400 hurdles gold medalist Melanie Walker. Even U.S. coaches have realized that the demanding U.S. college schedule grinds up athletes and does not necessarily lead to gold medals. Hence many U.S. athletes (Allyson Felix, Alan Webb, Clement) are training outside the college system. By staying home and both training and attending college on the island, Jamaican athletes can focus on winning international medals.
4. Perfect storm: Medal hauls are always partly serendipitous. Bolt developed into a superstar beyond anyone's expectations. U.S. women laid an expected egg in the 100, helping a Jamaican sweep. Luck plays a role.
5. Until recently, no national drug testing system: Maybe this is a factor and maybe it's not. If you assume that all Jamaican athletes are clean, then it's not a factor. But the fact is that Jamaican athletes are subjected to less out-of-competition drug testing than, say, U.S. athletes. Just before the Games, Jamaica announced the formation of a domestic drug-testing body, which might soften suspicion.
And, finally, No. 6: Usain Bolt was born there.

**Sir X** · August 22, 2008, 07:37 AM

Scars and snipes for American flops

Font Size: Decrease Increase
Print Page: Print

Jenny McAsey | August 22, 2008

A FEW days before the athletics program began, head coach Bubba Thornton revealed his gold medal plans for the US track and field team - "the real dream team", as he dubbed it.
"I hope the fans have heard our national anthem so often that when they leave the stadium they will be humming it," Thornton drawled.
So far the Chinese spectators are more likely to be humming a few bars from the national anthem of tiny island nation Jamaica than they are from the US.
The American juggernaut that dominated the track, especially the sprints, for decades, has been brought to a screaming halt in Beijing. On the first weekend of competition, when it usually brings home a cache of medals in the men's and women's 100m finals and often the shotput, the US anthem was not heard.
On Sunday, the US did not win a single medal, losing out to Jamaica which claimed an unprecedented clean sweep of medals in the women's sprint.
It was not until Monday night, when a virtual unknown, Stephanie Brown Trafton, from California won gold in the discus - the first time the US had won that event since 1932 - that the stars and stripes flew in the Bird's Nest.
After the embarrassment of the swag of drug busts associated with the Balco saga, which led to the demise of athletes including triple Olympic gold medallist Marion Jones and former 100m world record-holder Tim Montgomery, the Americans have been brought back to the pack. Going into last night's session they had won only three gold medals, in the men's 400m hurdles, women's discus and women's 100m hurdles. The American party has not been much fun and now it has been accused of trying to spoil other people's fun, lodging protests to boost its medal tally.
The matter came to a head in the men's 200m final late on Wednesday night, won in world-record time by Jamaica's Usain Bolt. Left in his wake were the three American sprinters, Shawn Crawford, Walter Dix and Wallace Spearmon.
Second to Bolt at the tape was Churandy Martina of the Netherlands Antilles, with the 2004 Olympic champion Crawford third and Dix fourth. Spearmon was disqualified for running out of his lane, a ruling the USA Track and Field Association eventually accepted.
But soon after it swallowed that, the USATF decided to lodge a protest alleging that Martina had also stepped out of his lane.
Two hours later, while Bolt was holding his press conference, word came through that the jury of appeal had accepted the US protest and Martina was also disqualified. That meant Crawford was elevated to the silver medal, and Dix went from fourth to bronze.
Hearing the decision, Bolt shook his head, his mouth agape. As one American reporter quickly noted: "That's no way to get popular."
But it is a way to improve your medal tally when other things are going awry.
Most notably, after the sprint failures, the US had no finalist in the men's high jump for the first time in history (apart from the boycotted Moscow Games in 1980) and no finalist in the men's long jump, also for the first time.
Other athletes have made finals as strong contenders but failed to produce, including 400m runner Sanya Richards, who faded badly to collect bronze, and Bernard Lagat, the world 1500m champion who did not make the final in Beijing.
The 2007 pole vault world champion Brad Walker also bombed out and did not make tonight's final.
Sprinter Lauryn Williams, who was fourth in the women's 100m final - a result the US also had the audacity to protest after one of their own runners Torri Edwards appeared to break at the start - said it was a wake-up call.
"It is very humbling," Williams said later.
"We're getting a pretty good taste of what it's like to be at the bottom, and it's going to make us hungry to get back to the top."

Story Tools

Share This Article

From here you can use the Social Web links to save Scars and snipes for American flops to a social bookmarking site.

Email To A Friend

* Required fields

Recipient's Name:* Required
Recipient's Email:* Required

Your Name:* Required
Your Email:* Required

Email Format:* HTML Text Only

Your Comments:* Required

Information provided on this page will not be used for any other purpose than to notify the recipient of the article you have chosen.

**Sir X** · August 22, 2008, 07:40 AM

News analysis: Jamaica digs out sprinting nuggets from training, yams
www.chinaview.cn 2008-08-21 22:34:33 Print

By Sportswriter Yan Hao
BEIJING, Aug. 21 (Xinhua) -- What a huge loss for the Olympic Games if there had not been Jamaicans running on the track in Beijing. The Caribbean country's five gold medals to date at the Games have all come from sprinters.
Usain Bolt, 21, has won double gold medals with two stunning world records in the men's 100m and 200m sprints. The 26-year-old Veronica Campbell-Brown won the women's 200m. Shelly-Ann Fraser and other two Jamaican women swept medals in over 100m. Melaine Walker, 25, added another by breaking the Olympic record in the women's 400-meter hurdles.
Having won three silver, one bronze, but never gold in men's 100m in previous Games, Jamaican sprinters blew the world's mind as they aggressively encroached on the old domain of the United States. Jamaica has made a statement to the world that they are awesome.
"We have a tradition, we have natural talents, We are the sprinter factory of the world," said Olivia Grange, Jamaica's minister of information, culture, sports and youth, adding the victory was "crazy and unbelievable".
Big screens were put up in squares or streets all over Jamaica for people to watch Bolt and other sprinters' races. On every victory, Jamaicans poured into streets of Kingston and Trelawny, which is Bolt's birthplace, to celebrate like a national holiday.
"We Jamaicans are just born to be sprinters," said Herbert Elliott, the Jamaican team's chief doctor. "Sprint running is part of our heart and soul."

LOTS OF YAMS, GREENS, FRESH AIR AND NUGGETS
"You know why? We eat healthy and good food, lots of yams. lots of greens, lots of fishes, good Jamaican food and clean fresh air," Jamaican minister Olivia Grange told Xinhua on Thursday. "I have had Jamaican food in Beijing. Maybe you should also start to eat Jamaican food."
There couldn't be a better way to advertise Jamaican restaurants in China for a minister's suggestion at such a time when the whole world is curious about Jamaica's secret in sprinting.
The female minister had acted an operator at the National Stadium, or the Bird's Nest, conveying telephone call of the country's prime minister to their sprinting champions.
Bolt has admitted that his home-made yams and many other Jamaican food have help him a lot in achieving the results. But he also has another favorite, chicken nuggets.
"Actually I got up at noon and my masseuse brought me the nuggets. I went straight to the track and then masseuse brought me more nuggets. I just ate two because my coach said I should not eat so many nuggets," he said.
No more, no less, two nuggets for two gold medals.

EARLY-AGE TRAINING SYSTEM
Nothing can stop you if you really have talent and train hard. Everyone in the world now believe that Jamaicans really have the talent. But few know that they train hard with discipline.
"We train our sprinters from their early childhood, in basic school and then primary school, secondary school, after that is professional training where they have personal coaches," Minister Grange said.
Bolt has been just an example who came out of such a school system. When he was only 15 years old in his primary school, Bolt won a national championships specially designed for junior talents like him in Jamaica.
"We continue to train them when these talents were picked up. They are also involved in centers of excellence," said the minister.
Jamaica has established two such kind of centers. One in Jamaica's University of Technology, where Asafa Powell was based. And the other is in the University of West Indies, shared by other sponsoring Caribbean countries and regions.
"We have the fastest man and fastest junior and we have many women among some of the fastest in the world," said Grange. "There will just be more Bolts to come."

GOVERNMENT-PAID GOOD COACHES
As another reason to create the amazing myth, Jamaica also provided their sprinters with national team coaches. "In some cases they were privately coached," said the minister. "But in extraordinary events like Olympic Games, they will have coaches paid by government.
"The ministry has an institute of sports where there are national coaches. And Usain's coach is the national coach at the institute of sports, which is an agency of government."
In Jamaica, there are probably thousands of young people who have a God-given sprinting talent and dream to be the fastest in the world. Bolt, a simple Jamaican lad coming from a humble family together with Asafa Powell and Melaine Walker have been inspirations to them.
"My coach has done a lot for me, taking me from like the injured to a double Olympic champion and world record holder," said Bolt when talking about his coach Glen Mills. "It is great that we have so many good coaches in Jamaica."
"My coach is great, I executed the way my coach wanted me to. He should be proud," Melaine Walker praised her coach Stephen Francis after winning the 400m hurdles. "I believe in him."
Also coaching Asafa Powell who did not do well in his race, Francis used to be considered controversial before Walker's success. But now he has been part of Jamaica's pride.
"We don't have too much money, but we have the talent, ambition and commitment," said the minister.
"We get better every day. Our young people or youth are getting better as well. So the beauty and secret has something to do with the fact that we are born with talents, we have a school system that from early age promotes physical education."

INSPIRATION TO CARIBBEAN
"Athletes from other Caribbean islands see Jamaican athletes as an inspiration and what we can do in Jamaica is to help our Caribbean brothers and sisters to be great athletes. We will improve our facilities. We will train more coaches. We will expand our sports college, the largest in the Caribbean," the female minister could not help to make a promise for her country as she always congratulated the sprinters in the mixed zone under the stadium.
"We gonna promote more community sports facilities in all 708 communities across Jamaica," she continued. "In every single community, we are going to have intense community sports development programs."
There maybe more Usain Bolts to come. And people are just waiting for Jamaica to unleash them to the world.

Editor: Xinhuanet Related Stories

**Sir X** · August 22, 2008, 07:52 AM

"I have had Jamaican food in Beijing. Maybe you should also start to eat Jamaican food."
There couldn't be a better way to advertise Jamaican restaurants in China for a minister's suggestion at such a time when the whole world is curious about Jamaica's secret in sprinting.

**Sir X** · August 22, 2008, 08:14 AM

The beautiful arrogance of Usain Bolt

By Scoop Jackson
Page 2
(Archive | Contact)

Updated: August 21, 2008, 4:36 PM ET

You hate him, don't you? But you're in love at the same time.
Of all the stars at these Olympics, Usain Bolt has impressed you the most. Sure, Michael Phelps will come away as the owner of these Games, but it is the vainglorious one from Jamaica who should be ascending a godlike podium with the label "all-time Olympic champion."

[+] Enlarge

AP Photo/Thomas Kienzle
Save this photograph and tape it to your wall.

But that will never happen because, even after not believing what he did, you still don't like him. There's no humility, no decorum, no sense of proper behavior on display when he runs and after he wins. His ego is to the third power. Makes Deion Sanders seem humble, doesn't he?
Also makes Deion seem slow.
He won by two-tenths of a second in the 100 meters -- when he slowed up to showboat -- and by nearly half a second in the 200, in races that are usually decided by hundredths of a second. The rumored and unofficially clocked but highly believable estimate is that he reached a speed of 33 miles per hour. The fact is his 6-foot-5 frame allows him to take three or four fewer strides than most runners in the 100 and up to nine fewer strides in the 200. The fact is he just turned 22. None of that helps you like him, does it?
The way he stood on that podium twice, the 200 gold medal resting on his chest, the 100 medal already tucked away. The look on his face. How he knew. How he saw this moment before any of us did. How, without saying a single word, he let us know that he knew it was going to be like this and thus justified him looking so vain and believing this Olympics is all about him.

• Complete Olympics coverage

• Forde: A star is born

• Cyphers: IOC should leave Bolt be

• The Olympics blog

The way he takes victory laps around the track draped with that green, black and yellow flag in those gold Pumas while others stand around like vultures who missed out on the last bite of the lion's carcass, bent over, hands on knees, panting, breathing hard, trying to survive the short distance they just ran at speeds inconceivable to normal man. Usain Bolt stands above them and barely exhales. Heart rate probably still at 70 bpm, he's cool as the coils in a Sub-Zero, relaxed as if he just finished listening to Esperanza Spalding on his iPod, confident as the Chinese government.

He wipes sweat from his brow when there is no sweat to wipe. He points. He postures. He poses. He pounds his chest before the 100 finishes. He jumps back and kisses himself. The only thing left for him to do is turn around and finish a race backward, saying, "I want to see what the other runners look like looking at me." And that would really tick you off.
He's so unnecessary, isn't he? And after watching Lolo Jones and Sanya Richards go down in tears, it makes you hate Usain even more. Make you wish something devastatingly dramatic like that would happen to him. Bring his too-fast ass back to reality. You overlook that what he's done is just take what Carl Lewis did in '84 and take it out of perspective because Carl never made it look this easy. You overlook that the Bolt phenomenon is nothing but Michael Johnson's arrogance and dominance with a personality.
The way he won the 100 and 200 left nothing to be desired but everything to be admired. As hard as Bolt is to appreciate, the comment -- "I was in awe" -- from Tyson Gay, the person who was supposed to be his major competition in these Games, has to be honored.
The 9.69. The 19.30. The fact that he set both world records with ease, the first man ever to break the world marks in both sprints at an Olympics -- something neither Lewis nor Jesse Owens achieved. The fact that he made Johnson (who apparently said publicly that he did not think Bolt would break his 12-year-old 19.32 record time in the 200) eat his words, then swallow them with pride. The fact that he's possibly taken one of America's most cherished sports away from us for the foreseeable future. The fact that he's done this with no mercy or respect for those who have run before him or alongside him bothers the hell out of you doesn't it?

But what bothers you most is that there's nothing that can be done about it. Not now. It's too late. He's arrived. Here to stay.
There's an AP photo by Thomas Kienzle that actually captures Bolt moving in what looks like natural speed. It's lightning in a bottle. Check the photo at the top of this page. Print it. Put it on your wall until 2012. It may help reduce the hate. It may make you look back and say to yourself, "I really should have loved Usain Bolt when I had the chance." Because if you -- and the rest of the world -- keep hating on him, you're only going to make him stronger.
Which means faster. Which is something none of you are going to be able to deal with, are you?
Scoop Jackson is a columnist for ESPN.com.

**Sir X** · August 22, 2008, 08:16 AM

I went into the barber shop this thursday, spoke to my american brethrens , all I can say is they are impressed and loving his antics.

**Mosiah** · August 22, 2008, 08:22 AM

Love This Article!!!!!

**Hortical** · August 22, 2008, 09:33 AM

He did set one new world record in the long jump, 25 feet, 10¼ inches.

**Mosiah** · August 22, 2008, 09:34 AM

I was not sure if he did. Thanks!

RBSC

Announcement

HWT LIVE :Reaction to bolt while race is being run

HWT LIVE :Reaction to bolt while race is being run

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment