Orville Taylor | Our athletes need more than welfare fund

My heart was broken when 1968 track and field Olympian Michael Fray died apparently by suicide in 2019. Over the years, another Olympian, javelinist and multi-event thrower, Olivia McKoy, has popped up with stories of her mental and financial well-being. Discus thrower Jason Morgan has shed tears on national television over the poor treatment of our national athletes. Hundreds of Jamaican representatives, from when the first A in the JAAA means amateur, have died in obscurity, squalor and abject poverty.

There are others who are mere legends and annotations in history books. Doubtless, we know of the Helsinki quartet, Don Quarrie and Merlene Ottey. For some reason we do not hear as much about Deon Hemmings and Tricia Smith but at least, this generation knows of them.

How many people remember those legs run by Ronetta Smith, Davita Prendergast and Shereefa Lloyd? And what of Jermaine Gonzales? Does anyone know that it was Michael Green (Roach) who put William Knibb High School on the map by making Olympic and world championship 100 metres finals? We remember Claudine Williams and the Turner triumvirate of Inez, Yvette and Janice from Vere Tech. Does the name Merlene Fraser, who at 17 years anchored the Jamaica 4x100 team in the semi-final to its eventual first global gold medal in 1991, ring a bell?

How many remember that Inez won 800 metres gold at the Commonwealth Games. True, we remember Davian Clarke, Roxbert Martin, Gregory Haughton and others. But do you remember Dennis Blake? What of Howard Davis and Devon Morris?

Let’s get even closer. Who has asked about Shericka Williams and Rosemarie Whyte, who disappeared since their last world championship appearances? How is Lorraine Fenton doing? Who remembers Dianne Guthrie, Cathy Rattray, Ilery Oliver and Rosie Allwood?

FEW TARNISHED MEDALS

In my 50 years of being a track and field aficionado, many have come and gone and only a select few have ‘eaten a proper food’. Too many track and field athletes have nothing to show but a few tarnished medals. And those are the lucky ones. Many have toiled, never winning a race, jump off or throw off. Trust me; Anastasia Leroy and Ashley Williams train as hard as Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, Elaine Thompson Herah and Shericka Jackson. Track and field training hurts more than when someone in your organisation tells a lie on you. One’s earnings in the sport often has nothing to do with one’s effort.

Pushing one’s body beyond the normal limit leaves permanent injuries. Every retired athlete has some physiological condition which they carry for life like nickname. Many get worse after retirement.

Every single person who has represented this country in my beloved sport worked and trained harder than the mule on Bongo’s grass cart. But like the mule, unless someone puts a little seed money down for them, there will be no sapling and no fruits to reap later.

Flashback to 1984 when Bertland Cameron, fresh after gaining Jamaica’s first World Athletic Championship gold medal, stopped in the middle of the 400 metres semi-finals and started again despite his major thigh injury. Watch the race on YouTube and tear up! I can tell you what was in Bert’s mind. He was not only running to beat Antonio Mackay and Innocent Egbunike; he was running to escape his natal poverty. Damaging his leg was the risk, because he had no alternative but to keep running.

If he were making the kind of ‘butter’ these elite athletes make now, he might have stopped, because another payday was down the road.

I fully back the Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association (JAAA) proposal to enforce its constitution-backed five per cent cess on elite athletes to create a ‘welfare’ fund. My disagreement is the term welfare, though; because we all pay ‘dues’ to organisations. We pay fees to unions, who negotiate on our behalf as a collective. Some workers may benefit more and some less. But this is how we build a society. The strong helping the weak.

EARNED THE RIGHT

Workers who worked for the glory of the nation have already earned the right to be supported; it is not welfare; it is social protection and well-being. The argument is not dissimilar to that regarding police and other public ‘servants’ who have served the nation. We judge a society on how we treat our vulnerable.

Not all athletes, or even workers for that matter, have good business and financial planning sense. One successful athlete married a banker. Thus, even if she got no material support from him, she knows how to manage and where to place her money for the future. Financial planning and retirement management is a profession. It requires much expertise in this complex financial world.

Financial institutions that administer pension schemes and sell pension plans are pretty numerous. Nonetheless, less than 20 per cent of employed labour have any post-retirement provision. In fact, with the new scourge called contract work, a shrinking portion of the labour force is involved in any kind of formal work-based arrangement to take care of them after their work life comes to an end.

Our National Insurance Scheme (NIS) was perhaps properly named when inaugurated in the 1960s. After all, not living until 65, the average Jamaican male was truly an ‘Allibutton’, dying at 60, before being able to benefit. At present, we live another 10 years after the NIS trips in.

However, most athletes retire by age 40 and many are hobbled. Therefore, what the JAAA needs is not simply a fund. It needs a well-managed and properly invested ‘trybrid’ of an unemployment, severance payment and pension programme, such as can be found in Barbados.

Very insightful JAAA; although you incited the sighted visionless detractors.

- Dr Orville Taylor is head of the Department of Sociology at The University of the West Indies, a radio talk-show host, and author of ‘Broken Promises, Hearts and Pockets’. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and tayloronblackline@hotmail.com.