Orville Taylor"WHA DIS father?" I already said my Father's Day piece so let us wallow in the glow of the 9.77 run by 'Atuffa' Powell.
I have said this before, but let me say it again. Where will the 'waggonists' be this weekend when the National Trials are being run?
Last year, and all the other years before, the National Stadium had a large surplus of space. I hope that this will be the occasion for the private sector and other interested 'parties' to show that track and field deserves at least as much attention as football.
I am a die-hard track and field fan and a 'flash in the pan' school athlete who ran his mouth better than his legs.
So it gives me immense satisfaction to know that a totally local athlete with no more 'drugs' than in the bottom of his cerassee tea mug, and the nicotine from his coach's cigarette, is number one.
Even more awesome is the fact his coach is local as well. In fact, it took a lot of 'guts' (and Stephen Francis has a lot of it) to start his local MVP stable with his 'guinea pig' Brigitte Foster. Now, he has the fastest human and the second fastest woman so far this year.
For the record, we have three each of the top 10 times for males and females in the 100 metres up to now. This means that since we have better coaches than the United States, who can hardly ever hold on to a baton when pressured, we should win the female 4x100 metres and could upset the American men as well.
Just to set the record straight, we have produced home-grown world-class senior athletes before. Danny McFarlane broke 45 seconds for the 400 metres while at G.C Foster and Bev Grant was based at Alcan.
Years ago, Teddy McCook, then president of the Jamaica Amateur Athletics Association, rejected the idea advanced by spoilsports like Carl Lewis that Jamaican athletes were going to American universities to benefit from better coaching. McCook argued that they had better facilities.
Did you know that the coach of the two top American sprinters, Justin Gatlin and Shawn Crawford, is Jamaican? Their leading female 400 metres runner is Jamaican and even ran at Champs.
PROPER TRAINING FACILITIES
Well, listen this! We, along with corporate Jamaica, need to find the money for another Chevron or Mundo-type track in central Jamaica.
Did you know that multiple World Junior Championship medallist Anneisha McLaughlin, top youth athlete Schillonie Calvert and rising star Sonita Sutherland as well as the numerous Vere, Edwin Allen and other athletes, have no proper training facilities?
Athletes from the central 'powerhouses' have to train on dirt or grass and easily suffer tendonitis, shin splints and other ailments.
Pubescent, fast-growing youth, who are above-average athletes, are particularly prone to these injuries. On grass or dirt, the surface is challenging and 'when it rains, it's poor.'
Whose idea was it to put the track in Catherine Hall in St. James when the main athletics 'factory' comprises the Middlesex parishes?
Anyway, my mouth waters and Helsinki should be another success story. We should win all the sprints and medal in the other relays.
I also expect a brilliant performance from Kenia Sinclair in the 800 metres, where she could be joined in the final by Michelle Ballentine. Sinclair has been impressive, and two weeks ago beat the Ethiopian Tadesse so badly even Selassie I would weep.
In the men's 200 metres Usain Bolt will have to contend with Americans Wallace Spearmon who has already run 19.91, Tyson Gay with his 19.93, and Walter Dix who has run 20.18. I expect Usain to 'bolt' to victory with Dix behind Gay chasing Spearmon (This sounds wrong!).
SUGAR INDUSTRY
In closing on a sour or bitter note, even though the topic is sweet, I ask, didn't all of the sugar protesters see the reduction in the price and sugar quotas coming?
The sugar industry is a white elephant and should have modernised and diversified long ago.
After half a millennium why aren't we producing granulated sugar and other more processed sugar products? There is where the real money lies.
When the University and Allied Workers Union entered the industry in 1988, I had expected that these would have been some of the recommendations given the global vision of its president.
Furthermore, the other two major unions have similar intellectual leaders. Where was their foresight? Why is the workforce in sugar so underskilled?
Why didn't the unions spend resources in re-training the workers not just for the traditional collective bargaining, but for the new realities created by globalisation?
Alan Rickards, chairman of the All-Island Cane Farmers' Association, nonsensically recommends that we ban British imports in retaliation.
Well sir, you can't do that under the World Trade Organisation's (WTO) rules and in any event how much do you think the U.K. would lose?
To do so is like us boycotting the use of soap because we don't like the cleaning effect. The fact is, the sugar producers and trade unions were caught napping.
It has been 10 years since the WTO was formed and they should have adjusted productive practices and their human resource development to deal with it. Why are they still surprised?
As banker Bill Clarke argues, we need effective, visionary leadership in all spheres, including his own. Likkle more!
Dr. Orville Taylor is lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work at the University of the West Indies, Mona.
