London 2012: Jamaican sprint factory producing...

[Karl]

London 2012: Jamaican sprint factory producing some of the fastest runners on Earth

Published on Friday July 20, 2012


DELANO WILLIAMS

David Ramos/Getty Images Delano Williams of the Turks and Caicos Islands crosses the finish line after winning the men's 200-metre final at the IAAF World Junior Championships in Barcelona, Spain earlier this month. Williams is one of a growing number of runners visiting Jamaica to learn how to become a better sprinter.



By James, Royson
City Columnist

A foreigner ran off last March with the prestigious title of fastest schoolboy in Jamaica, a country so crazy about track and field that 25,000 show up for a high school meet.

Delano Williams of the Turks and Caicos Islands won the Class 1 boys 100 and 200 metres at the meet that has become the spawning ground for Jamaica’s world champions, with legendary names like Donald Quarrie, Merlene Ottey, Usain Bolt and latest sensation Yohan Blake.

Running for Munro College, a rural, all-boys boarding school in St. Elizabeth parish, thousands of kilometres from his home, Williams’ win is a monkey wrench in the chatter about Jamaica sprinters having some innate powers, specifically a freak genetic mutation that be found at the island’s Cockpit region, home of Bolt, Blake and Ben Johnson.

Has Jamaica built the world’s most productive sprint factory?

That distinction may still belong to the United States with its highly funded university sports program and competitive intercollegiate system, first world wealth and a population more than 100 times Jamaica’s. The world still goes to U.S. colleges for scholarships and training. But increasingly, like Williams, they are coming to Jamaica to soak up whatever it is that produces sprint champs.

For decades, Jamaican runners sprinted towards U.S. colleges, athletic scholarships in hand, superior training and track stardom the goal.

Herb McKenly pioneered it, going to University of Illinois in the 1940s; then Quarrie, who attended USC and won gold and silver at Montreal in 1976; and the most enduring star Merlene Ottey, who seemed to run fast and forever, winning 9 Olympic medals over 7 Games, attended university in Nebraska.

It’s these homegrown, foreign-trained stars who established the island’s record of accomplishments in the early years of international glory. Now, Jamaica’s brightest track stars live and train at home.

Today, three of the fastest men in the world — Asafa Powell, Blake and Bolt train in Jamaica. So does the reigning female Olympic sprint champ Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce. And sprinters from Britain, the Caribbean and America are reversing the migration in search of the secret.

They come because the island has the reputation of being a sprint factory. They come as high schoolers to get a head start and early recognition. Like young hockey players making the pilgrimage to Ontario or Canadian basketball phenoms jumping to U.S. prep schools, sprinters are choosing Jamaica at an early age.

They are choosing wisely. As hockey is to Canada and soccer is to Brazil, so is sprinting to Jamaica.

Every basic school has a Sports Day where the 5-year-old can pretend to be Shelley-Ann Fraser or Usain Bolt. There is a national elementary school track championships at the national stadium. And the greatest show on earth is the national high school finals at the end of March called CHAMPS.

Survive this assembly line and you might be ready to take on the world.

The world recognizes this. Last year, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) announced it will fund a pre-feasibility study focusing on Jamaica as a training destination for foreign athletes.

Source: the star, Toronto, Canada

[Karl]

London 2012: Sprinting giants Jamaica, United States renew..

London 2012: Sprinting giants Jamaica, United States renew rivalry on Olympic track

Published on Friday July 20, 2012 Share on twitterShare on facebook





JAMAICA BEIJING

JERRY LAMPEN/REUTERS Shelly-Ann Fraser of Jamaica, right, celebrates after racing to gold in the women's 100-metre final at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing on Aug. 17, 2008.



By James, Royson
City Columnist


Sports rivalries bubble to a boil when the upstart underdog kicks the champ in the shin, takes the title and ascends the throne.

So, while tiny Jamaica had always fancied itself a worthy opponent of the U.S. sprinting giants, outside the island, athletes’ occasional victories were dismissed as statistical anomalies.

But at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, Jamaica so dominated the Americans that a new sporting rivalry gained irresistible currency.

Jamaican athletes won the men’s 100 metres, 200 metres, and 400-metre relays — all in world record time. The women swept the 100 metres, and won gold and bronze in the 200 metres, silver in the 400 metres, gold in the 400-metre hurdles and missed winning the 400-metre relays only because of a botched hand-off.

For the first time in Olympic history, the United States went home without a single gold medal in the sprints.

A year later, Jamaica showed the Olympic performance was no fluke when the islanders repeated the feat at the world championships in Berlin. The upstarts signalled they were here to stay.

Jamaica first entered the Olympics in 1948 and immediately set the London Games on fire. Arthur Wint and Herb McKenley took top spots in the 400 metres. Jamaica missed taking the 1,600-metre relay only because Wint was injured during the race.

Four years later, the Jamaicans returned. George Rhoden and McKenley finished one-two in the 400 metres, McKenley took the silver in the 100 metres; and the Jamaican quartet won the 4x400 relay, beating the Americans.

There was no live television audience to witness those epic feuds. Today’s Jamaican runners are fuelled by the stories of national heroes McKenley and Wint and Rhoden. And the Jamaica-U.S. rivalry — stoked by YouTube videos, chat lines, blog posts and global chatter — is white hot.

Since 1968, the world record for the 100 metres, the marquee event in the Olympics, has been held by athletes born in only two countries, the U.S. and Jamaica.

In late 2008, USA Track and Field chief executive Doug Logan was suggesting a U.S.A.-Jamaica showdown to determine who is best.

He wrote to Neville McCook, Jamaica’s International Association of Athletics Federations council member, refusing to “concede Jamaican dominance” and recommending both countries face off — once in Jamaica and once in the U.S.
They would run races from 100 to 400 metres, relays and hurdles to declare a winner in what Logan called a “compelling rivalry.” Alas, before the idea could be explored, Jamaica trounced the U.S. in Berlin, Logan lost his job, and talk of the delicious matchup died.

On Aug. 3 in London, the David vs. Goliath rivalry will be reignited to the delight of track and field fans across the world.

http://www.thestar.com/sports/london...-olympic-track

[Karl]

London 2012: Jamaica has high hopes...

London 2012: Jamaica has high hopes for its extraordinary athletes

Published on Friday July 20, 2012







USAIN BOLT FLAG

DANIEL SANNUM LAUTEN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt poses after winning the men's 100m race at the IAAF Diamond League athletics meet at Bislett Stadium in Oslo, on June 7, 2012. Bolt will complete in the Londo Olympics this month.









By James, Royson
City Columnist

TRELAWNY, JAMAICA — Over three shining days in Beijing four years ago, Jamaican runners overwhelmed the world’s finest athletes, dethroned the sprinting giants of America, and endeared themselves to the world.

An island nation barely out of the shackles of colonialism, whose athletes train for most of the year on dirt tracks marked by patchy grass, had so mastered the art of running fast that speed-drunk spectators in the Beijing’s Olympic stadium were caught up in a frenzy of celebration, each record-shattering victory uncorking a small carnival of excitement.

Leading the circus was Usain Bolt, charisma oozing from his sinewy frame, the very sight of him enough to engulf the stadium in a crescendo of cheers. On cue, Bolt’s teammates rode the wave to deliver Jamaica’s best performance at an Olympics: 11 medals, six gold, a victory in every sprint event except the women’s 400-metre relays, a whitewash of the perennial champs, three world records and one Olympic record.

The 2008 Games became the “Ja-lympics,” and Bolt emerged a legend. Crowned the fastest man alive for winning the 100-metre race — the most exhilarating, most universal of sporting events — Bolt had the name to match, and the personality.

Last seen on television, he was rapturous: dancing, playing to the crowd, doing the “gully creeper” and the “nuh linga” and other dance-hall moves of Jamaica’s underclass.

Do the Jamaicans have another masterpiece in them, in London, where in 1948 the first Jamaican athletes competed in the Olympic Games? Can they repeat their success, this time as a national gift for the island’s 50th anniversary of independence on August 6, the day after the 100-metre finals?
Everyone here in the foothills of Trelawny Parish in Cornwall County, 100 kilometres from the capital city of Kingston, expects a repeat — if not from Bolt, then from his training partner, challenger and fellow Trelawny son, Yohan “The Beast” Blake, the upstart who beat Bolt at the Jamaican Olympic trials in the 100- and 200-metres.

Does Jamaican sprinting success lie in yams?

Posing beside one of the yam hills in his backyard in Sherwood Content, a small town in Trelawny Parish, Wellesley Bolt laughs at the sensation he caused when the world came calling in 2008, searching for the secret to his son’s brilliance.

It is the yams: the Trelawny yellow yam, he told reporters, sparking blog posts, web chatter and rumours that the International Olympic Committee was investigating if the Jamaican staple of the poor man’s diet had steroidal powers.

The Japanese came calling. The Germans. The Chinese. And the Brits. All in search of an answer to the question track-and-field experts had been asking before Bolt exploded as a superstar. Why do Jamaicans run so fast?

If not the yams, maybe dasheen and dumplings. Or maybe it’s in the genes, in their DNA; perhaps Jamaicans, in abundance, have a sprint gene, much as the Kenyans are said to have genetic markers that account for their dominance in running long distances in record times.

Maybe it’s the island’s wealth of world-class coaches. And everyone credits the ridiculous intensity of competition. Or is theirs a culture of running, dating back to those earlier London Olympics, in 1948? Perhaps it is a drive to escape poverty?

Or is it a special place on the island that breeds champions: namely, the Cockpit region of Trelawny, near here.

But most controversial of all is the spectre of cheating: that perhaps a Jamaican chemist has managed to keep ahead of the anti-doping testing and concocted steroids and performance-enhancing drugs.

Scientists research the “sprint gene”

A team of scientists from the University of the West Indies and the University of Glasgow have been seeking answers. Lead researcher Rachel Irving from UWI’s Mona Campus in Kingston has written a book on the subject: Olympic DNA: Birth of the Fastest Humans.

Irving and her team studied 116 Jamaican and 114 African-American athletes and compared their genetic makeups to those of the general population, testing for the so-called sprint gene, actinin-3 (ACTN3).

Previous studies had shown that people whose forebears came from West Africa — the ancestral home of most Jamaicans and African-Americans — have the sprint gene in two forms.

Irving’s study found the stronger variant in three of every four Jamaicans, whether athlete or ordinary citizen. Among the African-American population, 70 per cent of the U.S. athletes had the gene compared to only 56 per cent of ordinary African-Americans.

Drawing on these research conclusions — which require greater study and analysis — some have decided that it is in the blood of Jamaicans to run fast.
But if that were true, wouldn’t there be hundreds of little Usain Bolts and Yohan Blakes, Shelly Ann Frasers and Merlene Otteys running around the Jamaican countryside?

And if African-Americans and Jamaicans come from the same ancestral pool, why did the Jamaicans show a prevalence of the sprint gene? And why aren’t the West African nations producing similar sprinters?

“The mystery is that somewhere between Africa and the Americas there was a genetic adaptation, some heteroplasty (mixing of normal and abnormal genes) allowing a number of genes of our African ancestors to exert a multi-systemic role on the health and fitness of the progenies of those who survived the journey,” Irving says.

And Jamaicans evolved the more potent form because their slavery experience was even more cruel and tortuous, sparking additional genetic adaptations that have spilled out onto the Olympic track.

An offshoot of the sprint-gene theory is the claim that the Cockpit — a range of mountainous enclaves and lowlands, mainly in Trelawny but also touching the neighbouring parishes of St. James and St. Elizabeth — breeds champions. Could geography be destiny?

Studies show that a disproportionate number of runners from Ethiopia and Kenya dominate middle and long distances in track competition. At the world championships last year Kenyans won five of six medals; Ethiopia took the sixth. The Arsi and Shewa regions in the central highlands account for 74 per cent of Ethiopia’s elite runners. In Kenya, 81 per cent are from the Rift Valley.

So, is the home region of Bolt, Blake and 200-metre champ Veronica Campbell-Brown the dominant producer of Jamaican sprinters?

No. It is home to the renowned maroons, slaves who ran away from the British and set up their own free society. But of the 43 Jamaican athletes who have won medals at the Olympics and at world championships, the majority, 10, are from Kingston. Trelawny claims five, St. James one, and St. Elizabeth two.

And the yam theory persists, even though when reporters asked Bolt about his diet he indicated a distinct preference for fast food over traditional.

Biochemist and UWI professor Errol Morrison points to the chemical phytosterol, a plant hormone found in yams that stimulates cell growth. He hypothesizes that this could stimulate production of actinia A, a protein associated with development of fast-twitch muscles necessary for the explosiveness of sprinters.

Youth aim to excel at Champs
March and April are track-and-field season in Jamaica. Every Jamaican recalls sports day at the elementary school. There are relays and marathons and cross-country races across the island. But nothing beats the spectacle of the annual four-day secondary school track-and-field championships called Champs.

Staged since 1910, it is like no other for drama, its atmosphere borne from the fierce competition among rooting schools. Imagine the carnival of U.S. college basketball’s March Madness. Now, put more than 200 U.S. college teams in one stadium. It is a cacophony of competing cheers, cresting and falling in waves of rehearsed and organic outbursts from alumni and students. And always the discordant buzz of the maddening vuvuzelas.

On one March evening there were some 25,000 fans at a high-school track-and-field meet. And taking in the performances of the 117 boys and 97 girls who will compete are scouts, agents, promoters, and media.

“If you can do well at Champs, you can do well anywhere,” Bolt said in 2010.
It is a cauldron, the testing ground that proves one’s mettle before the Jamaican sprint factory stamps its seal of approval and sends another sprint machine into global circulation.

The boys and girls know this may be their ticket out of poverty. Never mind the official national unemployment rates of 15, 16, 17 per cent. Double that and you begin to get within hollering distance of how many people can’t find gainful employment in paradise.

“Most of us come out of poverty and Champs is our first real opportunity,” said Grace Jackson, who won a 200-metre silver medal in the 1988 Olympics and is now director of sports for the University of the West Indies. “That’s not to say that rich people don’t run. But maybe poor people run just that little bit faster because we are striving. So that’s why all these kids are trying so hard; they want to win for their school and to get a better future.”

Champs has also produced a side benefit: a roster of coaches to rival and surpass most developed countries.

The two most celebrated coaches are Stephen Francis, who is founder of the Maximum Velocity and Power (MVP) Club, home to Asafa Powell and Shelly-Ann Fraser; and Glen Mills, who coaches both Bolt and Blake.

At Champs in March, Mills — who was meet director — reflected on the rise of Jamaican athletics and the nation’s future.

“It’s taken us 60 years to get where we are, but we’ve always been around,” Mills says. “Lennox Miller won silver in 1961, (Don) Quarrie won gold and silver in Montreal (in 1976). We’d been getting momentum leading up to Beijing.”

Beijing is “not an accident, like we emerged from the clouds and took over. We’d been edging closer and closer,” he adds.

How does Mills account for Jamaica’s success?

First, he says, few countries share Jamaica’s passion for track and field. There are no professional sports leagues here, so there are fewer ways to parlay sports into a professional career. In the United States, by contrast, athletics departments must compete for sprinters and hurdlers with the baseball, basketball and football teams.

In addition, he says:
>> Jamaica is a proud country that revels in taking on the world. Early successes created a thirst to “propel us to the top of the world. Athletics is our number 1 sport in terms of world achievement.”

>> Coaches and volunteers feed off their successes, so that now there is an overwhelming drive and passion to compete and win. “There is a passion and love of sport and country, and the possibility that track and field can bring to the people of Jamaica achievement not possible elsewhere in their lives.”

>> Coaches and athletes use ingenuity and hard work to overcome lack of facilities, equipment and resources. “Frankly, we are just fantastic in what we are able to achieve with what we have.”

Minutes after my interview with Mills I bump into Lenford Grant, a Toronto teacher who once ran an annual track meet at York University. He was helping with training and conditioning at the Vere Technical High School.

Vere Tech — a rural school in Hayes, Clarendon that has won 22 girls’ champs titles, including 15 straight from 1979 to 1993 — could barely put two hurdles together, he said. The school has sent 49 of its alumni to the Olympics, but they train on “a big open space of hard dirt.

“There are a couple of free weights in a little garage. For resistance training, they tie auto tires to the waist and sprint with them. There isn’t even a mat for sit-ups.”

Put those athletes in the starting blocks at London’s Olympic Stadium and they won’t be awestruck. They have been running fast for a long time. They build on a legacy of Arthur Wint and Herb McKenley and Lennox Miller and Merlene Ottey. They are running away from abject poverty. They see Bolt with his stable of fine cars and they hunger for the same.

Bolt knows how it feels. Blake wants a taste of it. A country in search of a national independence-day gift is intoxicated with expectation. And the world just wants a repeat of Beijing, when Jamaicans ran like the wind and left the Americans in their dust.

http://www.thestar.com/sports/london...inary-athletes

[Peter R]

Just one correction... Turks and Caicos to JA is "hundreds" not "thousands" of kms...

[Historian]

Thanks, Karl

Thanks for posting these articles, Karl.

All three commentaries are timely and certainly enjoyable.

[TDowl]

" challenger and fellow Trelawny son, Yohan “The Beast” Blake," Then again Trelawny break out of St James.

"But of the 43 Jamaican athletes who have won medals at the Olympics and at world championships, the majority, 10, are from Kingston. Trelawny claims five, St. James one, and St. Elizabeth two." What is this Lawd? Could someone put a name to the Parishes.

[Exile]

What happen to you this morning? Coffee and doubles. lol.

[Exile]

I think this naming of parishes for athletes gone the extreme now..these geographical boundaries mean very little especially when writers want to ascribe genetics, food etc. If is for bragging rights...well maybe but then we will have to look at where they were trained, coaches etc. One Jamaica mi seh!