Arnold BertramASAFA POWELL'S world-record breaking run of 9.77 seconds for the 100-metre at the Athens Grand Prix has created yet another occasion for an outpouring of national pride.
The news made the front page of virtually every major daily newspaper in North America and Europe, and headlined the news on international radio and television. Unbelievably, those responsible for advertising Jamaica have not yet caught on to the fact that for the rest of the world, Jamaica is the land of Bob Marley, Merlene Ottey, Marcus Garvey, Jimmy Cliff, Michael Manley, Veronica Campbell, and now Asafa Powell.
The fact that Powell's athletic prowess has been nurtured locally is of the utmost significance,
particularly when some insist on denigrating Jamaica's possibilities in the modern world. Powell is the product of a humble, devout rural family in St. Catherine, which takes pride in its Christian values. His elder brother Donovan, who attended St. Jago, was the only schoolboy to beat Calabar's outstanding sprinter Daniel England in a race at Boys' Athletic Championship. Asafa attended Charlemount High School, where up to his graduation, there was little to indicate that within four years he would be the fastest human being of all times.
STEPHEN FRANCIS
CHARTS A NEW COURSE
His coach, Stephen Francis, is equally exceptional as a human being. Francis was an outstanding student at Wolmer's Boys' School, where he successfully completed 'A' Levels and captained the Schools' Challenge Quiz Team. After gaining an upper second class honours degree at the University of the West Indies (UWI) in Management Studies, he proceeded to the University of Michigan where he completed a Master's Degree in Business Administration.
Francis' coaching career began at Wolmer's while studying at the UWI, and it was immediately clear to the athletic fraternity that his involvement brought a new dimension to the track and field programme at his alma mater, as the performances of Lindel Frater, Neil Gardner and Wayne Fenton attested. Francis first saw Asafa Powell perform in the schoolboy Athletic Championships of 2001, where Powell won his 100m heat in the smart time of 10.77secs. He false-started in the finals but Francis had seen enough, and sent his brother to offer Powell his services as his coach as they say, the rest is history.
Dennis Johnson, Jamaica's
former sprint world record holder, and present dean of Jamaica's coaching fraternity, tells an interesting story of his first encounter with Francis. "The first of my daily training sessions begins at 4.30 in the morning. On two consecutive mornings, I noticed a young man arrive and remain for the entire session, seemingly engrossed in the proceedings."
Francis had decided to
dedicate his future to coaching world champions and had
identified Johnson as the best person from whom to learn.
It was from this initial encounter that Johnson discovered Francis' passion for athletics and subsequently offered him the job as a coach at the High Performance Centre at the University of Technology. It was in these
circumstances that he soon had, not only Powell but Michael Frater, Sherone Simpson and Bridgette Foster under his watch.
GC FOSTER VISIONARY, ARCHITECT AND BUILDER
While Powell is not the first of Jamaica's home-grown world beaters, he is certainly among the finest to have emerged from a great tradition. This tradition goes back to the first decade of the 20th century and begins with Gerald Claude Eugene Foster who, like Francis, attended Wolmer's. Born in 1885, G.C. Foster grew up in a home where sports and physical exercise were a way of life. He enrolled at Wolmer's in 1894 but unfortunately left before the schoolboy Athletic Championships started in 1904. That year, he clocked 10 seconds for the 100 yards, which was clearly comparable to the 11 seconds run by Archie Hahn of the United States, to win the Olympic 100-metre finals that summer.
In the first all-island track and field competition held in 1906, G.C. Foster won the 100 and 220 yards, while his brother A.E. Foster topped the field in the 440 and 880. In 1907, G.C. Foster ran 9.7 seconds for the 100 yards equalling the existing world record. He then made contact with the English national athletics coach, Harry Andrews, who encouraged him to come to London for the 1908 Olympic Games. He set off for London only to discover that he could not compete because Jamaica was not affiliated. However, in the track meets following the games held in London and Ireland, 'GC' beat the American sprinters, A.J. Northridge and Sherman, as well as the English champion Jack Morton and Irish champion, Roach.
More so than any other person GC. Foster revolutionised Jamaica's track and field athletics. He was the first to introduce 'interval' training locally and long before the Czech distance runner, Emile Zatopek made it popular. 'GC' introduced speed work for long distance runners, by substituting 16 quarter-mile repetitions for one four-mile run. In addition, he was the first to emphasise the importance of form and the economy of running in a straight line. Each of his athletes had a medicine board for daily callisthenics and learnt the importance of nutrition.
Between 1930 and 1933, 'GC' coached Calabar High School to four consecutive wins at the Schoolboy Championships. From Calabar, he went to Kingston College where he achieved victory with the 1937 team. In 1938, Foster was at Jamaica College and the Championship Cup moved from North Street to Hope Road. The year 1949 was Wolmer's turn to be successful under 'GC's coaching, and in 1952 he was back at Jamaica College and the school scored one of the most memorable victories in the history of the schoolboy championships. In 1956, he again coached Wolmer's to victory and finished his coaching career at Kingston College with victories in 1957 and 1962. The photograph of his last winning team shows the young Lennox Miller seated beside him. He was then 77 years of age.
He died four years later in 1966, and while the Jamaica College of Physical Education is a fitting memorial to his life and work, I only wish the present generation of athletes knew more about the man who built the foundations on which they so successfully compete today.
Arthur Wint - an officer, a gentleman and an athlete
Arthur Wint who was the outstanding school boy athlete during his tenure at Calabar between 1932 and 1937, was the first of the outstanding athletes coached by GC Foster. In 1938, Wint was just 18 years when GC took him to the Central American and Caribbean Games in Panama. He had never run the half mile in high school and while Carl March of KC, the winner at championships that year ran 2 minutes 8 seconds, Wint won the gold medal with a time of 1 minute 56.3 seconds. Although Wint went off to England to join the RAF and to enrol as a medical student, he never had a personal coach there. Beyond any doubt, his successes at the Olympics in 1948 where he won a gold medal in the 400m and a silver in the 800m, were due in part to the efforts of GC Foster.
Cynthia Thompson, Donald Quarrie and Usain Bolt
Jamaica's second home-grown world record beater was Cynthia Annabelle Thompson, and fittingly a protégé of G.C. Foster. Her athletic prowess was in evidence as a student at St. Hugh's High School, but it was in 1941, the year when Jamaica's Women Amateur Athletic Association was formed, that she started training seriously. Guided by GC, she quickly established her reputation as Jamaica's leading female sprinter. In 1947, she equalled the world record of 10.8 seconds for the 100 yards in an international meet held in British Guiana. But her crowning glory came a year later in the White City Olympics. The 200 metres for women was introduced for the first time at these Olympics. Fanny Blankers- Koen of the Netherlands established the Olympic record by winning the first heat in 25.7 seconds. Thompson ran in the following heat and lowered the record to 25.6. Unfortunately, she fell ill for the finals and placed sixth.
While Donald Quarrie did not break a world record before leaving Jamaica, his claim for membership in this exclusive hall of fame is irresistible. He made his first major athletic appearance in 1965, winning the Class III 100 yards at the Inter-Secondary Schoolboys Championships, despite suffering cramps 20 yards from the tape. In 1968, when he ran his last race at the schoolboy championships, he had broken the record in every class and had only lost once. At the trials to select the team for the 1968 Olympics, Quarrie ran 10.3 behind Lennox Miller who ran 10.2 seconds in the 100 metres. The following night, he ran the same time as Miller in the 200 metres and secured his place as a member of Jamaica's Olympic team to Mexico before his 18th birthday. Unfortunately, Quarrie got hurt in Mexico and was replaced by Errol Stewart. When we recall that Jamaica's 4 by 100 relay team broke the world record with a 38.3 second clocking in the semi-finals, we can safely conjecture that this mark would have been even lower with a fit Quarrie on the team.
This roster of world-beaters could never be complete without mention of the teenage sprint phenomenon, Usain Bolt, who was discovered by Jamaica's former Olympic sprinter, Pablo McNeil. At the World Junior Games held in Kingston, Jamaica in 2002, the 16-year-old Bolt electrified Jamaica with his gold medal run in the 200 metres. The following year at the Carifta Games, he served further notice to the international athletic community of his arrival with a phenomenal 19.9 second clocking to break the world junior record in the 200 metres.
Second to None
This is the tradition to which Asafa Powell is now heir, a tradition of excellence of which any country would be proud. Jamaica's record of achievement in Olympic Track and Field events since 1948 is nothing short of incredible. We have competed in 207 events, reached 95 finals, won seven gold medals, 20 silver medals, 16 bronze medals with 17 fourth place finishes. Only the United States of America is ahead of us with 100 times our population and 10 times our per capita income. Compared to the rest of the world, we are second to none.
Our phenomenal international success in track and field athletics is directly related to the fact that this activity is one in which Jamaica has consistently provided talent, leadership, volunteerism and applied the most modern fruits of technology. In an age of globalisation, Stephen Francis and Asafa Powell have clearly demonstrated that the future in athletics belongs to the professional coach and the professional athlete, with the market deciding returns on investment. While the intervention of Prime Minister, P. J. Patterson has made the critical difference for many an athlete, the state urgently needs to define a clear role to ensure that Jamaica shares as much in the preparation as in the celebration.
