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Germaine Mason trains with Powell, hangs out with Bolt, jumps for Britain
Germaine Mason won silver at the Beijing Olympics and now he is focused on winning gold at London 2012
Germaine Mason flys the British flag after winning silver in Beijing. Photograph: Valery Hache/AFP/Getty Images
Germaine Mason and Asafa Powell are hanging off a stretch of industrial fencing, their arms straining as they perform leg raises at the MVP athletics track in Kingston, Jamaica. It is early morning but already the sun is blazing and their bodies glisten with sweat.
This is where Jamaica's top track and field stars – with the exception of Usain Bolt – train. On a small concrete area behind the University of Technology dorms, 30 athletes, male and female, are crowded together, powering through push-ups and crunches. Some are unknown, others are globally famous, among them the former 100m world record holder Powell, and the Olympic gold medallists Shelly Ann Fraser and Melaine Walker. But they mix as equals.
This ''beat up'' location, as Mason describes it, is where the Olympic medal-winning high jumper likes to base himself – shunning world-class facilities in Britain, the country for which he chose to compete back in 2006. Why? Coach Stephen Francis – the man with a paunch and a golf buggy to cart it around in – and his work in creating this pioneering athletics club, holds the answer.
Francis, the first Jamaican coach to persuade local athletes successfully to stay on the island rather than decamp en masse for the United States, is best known for coaching Powell, who ran 9.77 seconds to break the world record in 2005. He has a long history with Mason, with whom he began working half a lifetime ago. Mason, now 26, was 13 when they started, and says Francis has been "like a father to me". At home Mason's own father was often absent, touring the world with the reggae star Jimmy Cliff, for whom he works as a sound engineer. His son learned his "life lessons" from Francis.
"In Jamaica you're easily influenced into gangs,'' says Mason, ''I was a part of that for a few years, but Stephen was the one who changed me. The more he talked to me I decided that wasn't the road I wanted to go down. I saw stuff that friends were doing. It wasn't like gangs where we went and terrorised people, we didn't have guns, we just weren't behaving ourselves, we weren't going to school. Most of the guys were athletes, some played football, some played cricket. We didn't go to training, only when we went to competition we showed up, but it wasn't guns and drugs. There was one case where one of my friends went to prison. Ever since that happened I thought, 'I never want to be in a situation where that might happen to me'."
It never did, but the same cannot be said of Mason's younger brother, Andre, jailed for life for his part in the brutal murder of a Somali student. Unlike Germaine, who was brought up in Jamaica, Andre moved to London six years ago to be raised by his mother. He was only 14 when at the time of the murder and part of a gang called MDP – "Money, Drugs, Power". Germaine's MVP athletics club could not be more of a contrast – it stands for "Maximising Velocity and Power".
Contrasting photographs of the two brothers were splashed across the newspapers, Andre's police mugshot alongside Germaine's jubilant Olympic celebrations. Mason was ''shocked and saddened'' by the events, his younger brother choosing the life path that he himself had managed to resist. He does not like talking about it other than to say: "It has been a difficult year for my family." His mother was there in Birmingham this weekend to watch Mason compete in the UK Trials.
During his own teenage years Mason "just started focusing on training". Francis told him that he could win an Olympic medal one day and, as silver and bronze came at consecutive world junior championships in 2000 and 2002, the dream became reality with a silver in Beijing last summer. But it was not a smooth path to success. When an injury in 2004 affected his form, and just as Powell's stock began to rise on the world stage, Mason's relationship with Francis began to sour. In the shade of a tree, out of earshot of his coach, Mason sorts through a pile of broken office chairs, finds two steady enough to sit on and begins to tell the story.
"Stephen and I had a big fall out," he says, ''that was when I made up my mind that I'm going to compete for Great Britain [as a junior he had represented Jamaica but, as his father was born in London, he was eligible for both countries]. I thought I wasn't getting all the attention I needed.
"Now I think I was just being spoilt and selfish – he couldn't only look after me, he had the others to look after. It was around the time that Asafa broke the world record and – you know coaching is a business as well – all that stuff was just in my head and I was getting really angry. I felt like he was giving up on me.
"He has a weird personality. He can be very intimidating. Sometimes I'd get too comfortable with him and then he'd snap at me and we'd be good again. He's a strange guy, hard to figure out. Sometimes he's nice, sometimes he's not nice – at that time he was ignoring me all the time and I wasn't liking that much. We had a meeting and I told him I was leaving. His brother told me afterwards that Stephen was hurt when I left. At the time I didn't think he cared."
Mason is so softly spoken it is difficult to imagine him involved in a showdown with the domineering Francis. He soon left for Texas where he trained with Sue Humphrey, former coach of Olympic gold medallist Charles Austin, and then for England, changing allegiance and basing himself in Birmingham. But nothing seemed to feel right. A chance encounter with Francis in 2007 convinced Mason to return to the MVP track. "He said I should come back and we'd work out something. I knew I was going to do well from the beginning of that season, I could feel everything coming back, everything I did was aggressive. In England and Texas it was going through the motions, I was training by myself with no team-mates to push me."
The following summer Mason jumped 2.34m to win silver in Beijing. It was the breakthrough that coach and athlete had been dreaming of. "When I won the medal that was the first time I ever seen him [Francis] happy. He gave me a big hug, I was so surprised, everyone was shocked. He had the biggest smile on his face. I felt his happiness. Even when Asafa broke the world record he was just like 'good job'."
The MVP club came away with an unprecedented eight Olympic medals, including three from the men's 4x100m. But Powell's failure to finish in the top three of the 100m final was painful for Francis. Suddenly Bolt's coach, Glen Mills, was the man in the spotlight. "I know he [Francis] was really disappointed after the 100m," says Mason.
In Jamaica, rumours of the rivalry between MVP and Racers Track Club, their athletes (most notably Powell and Bolt respectively) and their coaches, are rife. Mason is not involved. He was a room-mate of Powell at university, and with Bolt the two instinctively embraced in Beijing after the high jump final. "People always try to start rivalry. I never heard Asafa say anything bad about Usain, and I never heard Usain say anything about Asafa. They are rivals on the track, but there aren't words being thrown at each other."
At MVP there is now a strong chemistry between Francis, Powell and Mason. When he is not barking out orders, Francis jokingly argues with Powell about cars. "They are always fighting about cars!" says Mason, "Stephen says his Audi is better than Asafa's Mercedes. One time we were competing in Germany and he was telling Asafa, 'You see, your car is a taxi over here!'" The banter works both ways.
At the track Mason is known as "singing tall man" – "because I'm always hearing the new songs and coming to practice and singing". He spends much of his spare time following in the footsteps of his father, hanging around the Big Ship recording studios of reggae star Freddie McGregor, now occupied by his son Stephen.
There is a shy quality about Mason that helped endear him to his British team-mates, and his family connection to sprinter Simeon Williamson – the two are cousins – also helped. "My team-mates show me a lot of love." Starting a funny story about some of the GB girls, he begins to blush. "In 2007 there was this big competition and all the girls gave me Mr GB 2007. They were picking out different body parts of all the guys and then they were like, 'Oh stop, let's just give it to Germaine'. I am quite shy, so I was blushing all over. But it was really nice."
Mason may well win that title again in 2009, but what he really wants is another medal. Despite the setbacks his aim is clear. "It's all about preparing for 2012 and so it's important to keep improving every year. I want to do better than I did in Beijing. I can't settle for less."
Yesterday, competing in only his third competition of the year at the UK Trials, Mason, who has been struggling with a leg injury, won with a jump of 2.24m, a long way short of the 2.31m he will have to clear if he is to meet the A-qualifying standard for the world championships, which start in Berlin in just five weeks' time.
Should he fail to do so it could be a long time before that smile returns to the face of coach Francis.
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Germaine Mason won silver at the Beijing Olympics and now he is focused on winning gold at London 2012
- Anna Kessel
- The Observer, Sunday 12 July 2009
- Article history
Germaine Mason flys the British flag after winning silver in Beijing. Photograph: Valery Hache/AFP/Getty ImagesGermaine Mason and Asafa Powell are hanging off a stretch of industrial fencing, their arms straining as they perform leg raises at the MVP athletics track in Kingston, Jamaica. It is early morning but already the sun is blazing and their bodies glisten with sweat.
This is where Jamaica's top track and field stars – with the exception of Usain Bolt – train. On a small concrete area behind the University of Technology dorms, 30 athletes, male and female, are crowded together, powering through push-ups and crunches. Some are unknown, others are globally famous, among them the former 100m world record holder Powell, and the Olympic gold medallists Shelly Ann Fraser and Melaine Walker. But they mix as equals.
This ''beat up'' location, as Mason describes it, is where the Olympic medal-winning high jumper likes to base himself – shunning world-class facilities in Britain, the country for which he chose to compete back in 2006. Why? Coach Stephen Francis – the man with a paunch and a golf buggy to cart it around in – and his work in creating this pioneering athletics club, holds the answer.
Francis, the first Jamaican coach to persuade local athletes successfully to stay on the island rather than decamp en masse for the United States, is best known for coaching Powell, who ran 9.77 seconds to break the world record in 2005. He has a long history with Mason, with whom he began working half a lifetime ago. Mason, now 26, was 13 when they started, and says Francis has been "like a father to me". At home Mason's own father was often absent, touring the world with the reggae star Jimmy Cliff, for whom he works as a sound engineer. His son learned his "life lessons" from Francis.
"In Jamaica you're easily influenced into gangs,'' says Mason, ''I was a part of that for a few years, but Stephen was the one who changed me. The more he talked to me I decided that wasn't the road I wanted to go down. I saw stuff that friends were doing. It wasn't like gangs where we went and terrorised people, we didn't have guns, we just weren't behaving ourselves, we weren't going to school. Most of the guys were athletes, some played football, some played cricket. We didn't go to training, only when we went to competition we showed up, but it wasn't guns and drugs. There was one case where one of my friends went to prison. Ever since that happened I thought, 'I never want to be in a situation where that might happen to me'."
It never did, but the same cannot be said of Mason's younger brother, Andre, jailed for life for his part in the brutal murder of a Somali student. Unlike Germaine, who was brought up in Jamaica, Andre moved to London six years ago to be raised by his mother. He was only 14 when at the time of the murder and part of a gang called MDP – "Money, Drugs, Power". Germaine's MVP athletics club could not be more of a contrast – it stands for "Maximising Velocity and Power".
Contrasting photographs of the two brothers were splashed across the newspapers, Andre's police mugshot alongside Germaine's jubilant Olympic celebrations. Mason was ''shocked and saddened'' by the events, his younger brother choosing the life path that he himself had managed to resist. He does not like talking about it other than to say: "It has been a difficult year for my family." His mother was there in Birmingham this weekend to watch Mason compete in the UK Trials.
During his own teenage years Mason "just started focusing on training". Francis told him that he could win an Olympic medal one day and, as silver and bronze came at consecutive world junior championships in 2000 and 2002, the dream became reality with a silver in Beijing last summer. But it was not a smooth path to success. When an injury in 2004 affected his form, and just as Powell's stock began to rise on the world stage, Mason's relationship with Francis began to sour. In the shade of a tree, out of earshot of his coach, Mason sorts through a pile of broken office chairs, finds two steady enough to sit on and begins to tell the story.
"Stephen and I had a big fall out," he says, ''that was when I made up my mind that I'm going to compete for Great Britain [as a junior he had represented Jamaica but, as his father was born in London, he was eligible for both countries]. I thought I wasn't getting all the attention I needed.
"Now I think I was just being spoilt and selfish – he couldn't only look after me, he had the others to look after. It was around the time that Asafa broke the world record and – you know coaching is a business as well – all that stuff was just in my head and I was getting really angry. I felt like he was giving up on me.
"He has a weird personality. He can be very intimidating. Sometimes I'd get too comfortable with him and then he'd snap at me and we'd be good again. He's a strange guy, hard to figure out. Sometimes he's nice, sometimes he's not nice – at that time he was ignoring me all the time and I wasn't liking that much. We had a meeting and I told him I was leaving. His brother told me afterwards that Stephen was hurt when I left. At the time I didn't think he cared."
Mason is so softly spoken it is difficult to imagine him involved in a showdown with the domineering Francis. He soon left for Texas where he trained with Sue Humphrey, former coach of Olympic gold medallist Charles Austin, and then for England, changing allegiance and basing himself in Birmingham. But nothing seemed to feel right. A chance encounter with Francis in 2007 convinced Mason to return to the MVP track. "He said I should come back and we'd work out something. I knew I was going to do well from the beginning of that season, I could feel everything coming back, everything I did was aggressive. In England and Texas it was going through the motions, I was training by myself with no team-mates to push me."
The following summer Mason jumped 2.34m to win silver in Beijing. It was the breakthrough that coach and athlete had been dreaming of. "When I won the medal that was the first time I ever seen him [Francis] happy. He gave me a big hug, I was so surprised, everyone was shocked. He had the biggest smile on his face. I felt his happiness. Even when Asafa broke the world record he was just like 'good job'."
The MVP club came away with an unprecedented eight Olympic medals, including three from the men's 4x100m. But Powell's failure to finish in the top three of the 100m final was painful for Francis. Suddenly Bolt's coach, Glen Mills, was the man in the spotlight. "I know he [Francis] was really disappointed after the 100m," says Mason.
In Jamaica, rumours of the rivalry between MVP and Racers Track Club, their athletes (most notably Powell and Bolt respectively) and their coaches, are rife. Mason is not involved. He was a room-mate of Powell at university, and with Bolt the two instinctively embraced in Beijing after the high jump final. "People always try to start rivalry. I never heard Asafa say anything bad about Usain, and I never heard Usain say anything about Asafa. They are rivals on the track, but there aren't words being thrown at each other."
At MVP there is now a strong chemistry between Francis, Powell and Mason. When he is not barking out orders, Francis jokingly argues with Powell about cars. "They are always fighting about cars!" says Mason, "Stephen says his Audi is better than Asafa's Mercedes. One time we were competing in Germany and he was telling Asafa, 'You see, your car is a taxi over here!'" The banter works both ways.
At the track Mason is known as "singing tall man" – "because I'm always hearing the new songs and coming to practice and singing". He spends much of his spare time following in the footsteps of his father, hanging around the Big Ship recording studios of reggae star Freddie McGregor, now occupied by his son Stephen.
There is a shy quality about Mason that helped endear him to his British team-mates, and his family connection to sprinter Simeon Williamson – the two are cousins – also helped. "My team-mates show me a lot of love." Starting a funny story about some of the GB girls, he begins to blush. "In 2007 there was this big competition and all the girls gave me Mr GB 2007. They were picking out different body parts of all the guys and then they were like, 'Oh stop, let's just give it to Germaine'. I am quite shy, so I was blushing all over. But it was really nice."
Mason may well win that title again in 2009, but what he really wants is another medal. Despite the setbacks his aim is clear. "It's all about preparing for 2012 and so it's important to keep improving every year. I want to do better than I did in Beijing. I can't settle for less."
Yesterday, competing in only his third competition of the year at the UK Trials, Mason, who has been struggling with a leg injury, won with a jump of 2.24m, a long way short of the 2.31m he will have to clear if he is to meet the A-qualifying standard for the world championships, which start in Berlin in just five weeks' time.
Should he fail to do so it could be a long time before that smile returns to the face of coach Francis.
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Paul Marin -19 is one thing, 20 is a whole other matter. It gets even worse if they win the UCL. *groan*. 
05/18/2011.MU fans naah cough, but all a unuh a vomit?-Lazie 1/11/2015
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