Audley Boyd, Assistant Editor - Sport

Glen Mills - Contributed

GLEN LEBERT Livingston Mills has totally dedicated his career to the enhancement of Jamaica's track and field athletic prowess, especially in the area of sprints.

Mills is 57 years and a vast 36 of those have been devoted to an unbroken career in track coaching. In that time, he has firmly established himself as a cornerstone in the nation's athletics development and numbers on the panel of high-profile coaches given the mandate to develop top regional talent at the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF)-run High Performance Training Centre at the University of Technology (UTech).

Over the past 19 years, Mills, whose birthday falls on August 14, has been head coach of the national senior track team, having taken the baton in 1987 from Herb McKenley, a man who was honoured to the 'max' for greatly contributing to the sport's development in this country.

Mills has been to every Olympics since 1984, when he was McKenley's assistant, and has been deeply involved in the preparation of the nation's athletes for other major events, including the World Championships (Indoor and Outdoor), Commonwealth Games, Pan-Am Games and CAC Games, just to name a few.

Remarkably, his coaching career exploded from the blocks while he was still a student at Camperdown High and it is no surprise that his alma mater became the training ground for some of his greatest exploits.

'Sprint Factory'

It is little wonder then that only a few years on, his works earned Camperdown the title 'Sprint Factory' as it perennially churned out a battery of fast men including Raymond Stewart, who, at age 19, finished sixth in the 100 metres final and won silver running the anchor-leg on Jamaica's sprint relay team at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984. To this day, Stewart still holds the national junior record - 10.17 seconds - set 22 years ago.

An even more astounding fact is the nine Championships of Americas 4x100 metres titles Camperdown won under Mills's guidance in a 15-year stretch at the famous Penn Relays. That distinction was enough for the school's induction to the Honour Wall at Penns - something similar to a Hall of Fame induction.

He is also the founder, head coach and president of the rejuvenated Racers Track Club (formed in the '80s), which includes several senior national and international athletes such as 200 metres World Junior Record holder Usain Bolt (19.93 seconds), Aleen Bailey, and World Championship 100m gold medallist Kim Collins of St. Kitts and Nevis.

Naturally gifted

This naturally-gifted coach has also armed himself with requisite qualification from an IAAF Level One coaching course, as well as diplomas from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Training Centre in Mexico; and for High-Level Sprint Tech training, earned at the IAAF Training Centre in Puerto Rico.

Previous honours include an Order of Distinction (Officer Class) at the national level in 2003 and a Certificate of Achievement from the (then) Carreras Foundation, also for his contribution to the development of track and field in this country.

On the administrative side, Mills is the National Sports Co-ordinator, a position he has held for the past 17 years at the Institute of Sports (INSPORTS). He has worked with that national sporting organisation for an incredible 33 unbroken years, even while he performed other important duties as a vice-president of the Jamaica Amateur Athletics Association (JAAA) for 12 years and a committee member for the same organisation for 26 years. He remains a member of the JAAA.