Alfred Dawes | Thank you, Olympians

A few years ago on a trip to Thailand, my travel partners thought it would be funny to prank our taxi driver into believing I was Usain Bolt on my way from Australian football try-outs. Despite the protests of my ‘coach’, my ‘road manager’ allowed the ecstatic driver to take a few pictures with the big man. With my cap pulled down over my face and towering over him, we took a few shots, of course including ‘my’ signature pose. I guess all tall black men look alike because he left us overjoyed and unsuspecting. We wondered what that conversation with his friends would look like when he started to gloat about his celebrity passenger and produced the picture evidence.

Throughout our sojourn in South East Asia, whoever knew of Jamaica would immediately reel off the names Bolt and Marley. In India it was Chris Gayle who was notable, and I’m not sure why, but Jimmy Cliff shared that podium in Brazil. The social capital of being a Jamaican is worth at least a round of beer. In El Calafate, Patagonia, the wearer of a Jamaican jersey was incredulous about meeting a real-life Jamaican so much that the tiny club saw champagne flowing all night. Such is the power of being a Jamaican in countries where not much is known about our domestic issues.

Brand Jamaica is powerful. To be Jamaican means you are a member of a great tribe of musicians and athletes. The image projected on the world stage is such. For a population of our size to do so much with so little makes our achievements on the world stage even more remarkable. Our music has inspired many genres, including hip hop, dubstep and reggaeton. It is easy to dwell on our contribution to music and sports but our impact on the world goes far beyond this. Jamaicans have changed the fates of many nations from Boukman and the Haitian revolution to Manley and the non-aligned movement.

TESTED ATHLETES

But back to the track. Whenever we dominate at the World Championships or Olympics, there is always some troll who casts aspersions as to our athletes doping. I feel proud whenever I see this come up. Jamaicans are some of the most tested athletes in the world. If we as a third-world country, with minimal research facilities, can maintain a sophisticated doping programme that has been so successful in producing the best athletes and at the same time never getting caught, then they are saying that we have the best doctors and scientists in the world. I’m glad they think so highly of us.

The truth is our home-grown talent has always come up against sophisticated doping programmes from developed countries. There are some women’s records from the ‘80s that look impossible to approach much less beat. We now know of the Eastern European and North American drug programmes that cranked out super athletes. We know that some of the stars tested positive but there were cover-ups. We know that the dirtiest race ever run saw only Ben Johnson singled out for crucifixion. That is what our athletes of the ‘80s and ‘90s were up against. Now with a more level playing field, our raw talent is showing who are the real MVPs.

WE HAVE THE MEDALS

They can speculate all they want. We have the medals. We have the depth. I know it must be crazy to believe that a tiny nation can train their own in third-world facilities and beat a wider selection pool training in state-of-the-art facilities. It’s hard to believe we do this with no advanced nutritional programmes and our athletes for the most part are amateurs in regular nine-to-five jobs. We are not sure ourselves how we do it but we don’t count cows, we are drinking the milk of success. When the 2021 Olympics are over, the Jamaican anthem will once again have been played more times than that of several nations 10 times our size, put together.

At 59 years old since we became an independent nation, we have once again been gifted a sense of national pride by our athletes. We bask in their success even as we curse them for their failures. We forget that the sacrifices they made to get to even compete at that level are worthy of praise. Our expectations are high and we have got used to a certain level of accomplishments. It may not always be on that level. Let us not be ungrateful when they fall short.

When we welcome them home, let our focus not only be on the medallists, but on everyone who made that trip and supported each other in Japan. They made us forget our problems for a minute while we all basked in their glory. We felt our hearts swell with pride with their victories and we shared the anguish of their defeat. We forgot our differences and would have hugged strangers in bars were this a different era.

Our athletes have brought us together as a country and allowed us some respite from the dark times through which we are struggling. For this I want to say thank you all for making us proud. Thank you for the free beers and laughs when we travel. Thank you for keeping them guessing how you do it!

- Dr Alfred Dawes is a general, laparoscopic, and weight-loss surgeon; fellow of the American College of Surgeons; Follow him on Twitter @dr_aldawes. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and adawes@ilapmedical.com.