Editorial | Partnership for athletics

The Jamaica Olympic Association’s (JOA) pledge to establish a pension scheme for the island’s athletes seems a capital idea.

But the declaration by Christopher Samuda, the JOA’s boss, as a practical response to the decision by a number of top athletes to relinquish their Jamaican status in international competitions and decamp to Türkiye, doesn’t address several other key issues to ensure the long-term sustainability of Jamaican athletics, and the island’s place as a global power in track and field athletics.

Indeed, neither Mr Samuda nor any of the top officials in critical sporting organisations, including the Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association (JAAA), has as yet publicly, or seriously, addressed the many governance questions in sports administration. Nor has the government.

So, the JOA and the JAAA (and other sport bodies) seem intent on continuing to operate with minimal transparency and little public accountability, apparently on the basis that they remain private organisations, beholden only to their international governing bodies. To which this newspaper begs to differ and to insist that the island’s major sporting organisations owe a fiduciary obligation to the Jamaican public, who invest heavily, emotionally and otherwise, in the country’s athletes.

Mr Samuda’s pension proposal was triggered by last month’s announcement that four athletes, including three medallists from the Paris Olympics: Roje Stona (gold in the discus); Rajindra Campbell (bronze for shot put); and Wayne Pinnock (silver for the long jump), had changed allegiance to Türkiye. They were followed by world under-20 record holder in the long jump, Jaydon Hibbert.

It has been reported that the Turkish sport authorities offered the athletes signing bonuses of US$500,000.00 (J$80.5 million), plus monthly stipends and performance incentive for podium places at major games.

LACK OF ATHLETE-CENTRED APPROACHThe Gleaner is sympathetic to athletes who accept such lucrative offers, whether from Türkiye or other countries. The careers of track and field athletes are short and uncertain, and but for the very top stars in a handful of disciplines, few have significant earnings. Indeed, many track and field athletes struggle economically in their post-athletic life.

It is not expected that even the Jamaican sporting federations or other bodies can match the payments that Ankara is said to have offered to the athletes who shifted to Türkiye. The issue, however, is not solely about big dollars.

There is a sense of a lack of athlete-centred approach to the management of sport in the island, as well as insufficient creativity in how they pursue the economic interests of those who perform. The perception of the big sporting associations, therefore, is that they are platforms from which the leaders promote and enhance their status, with the presumption that Jamaican exceptionalism will consistently churn out new talent.

Many people were therefore not surprised by the seemingly lack of empathy by the JAAA for the athletes who will now perform for Türkiye, and cast their decision as the result of a diabolic plot by unnamed managers and coaches.

“... Our sport is being handcuffed by a particular group of stakeholders,” claimed Garth Gayle, the president of the JAAA.

We, of course, reject that assertion and would suggest that the JAAA and the JOA begin a serious conversation on their internal inefficiencies, such as the JAAA’s bungling that caused Noyoka Clunis, an automatic qualifier for the hammer throw, to be left off a list of Jamaican athletes submitted to World Athletics for the Paris Olympics. Or why University of the West Indies professor, Rachel Irving, who has studied the effects of hydration on athletes’ health, couldn’t, for two months ahead of the Paris Olympics, arrange a meeting with either the JAAA or the JOA to discuss how extremely high summer temperature in France might be mitigated for Jamaican athletes.

GENUINELY NATIONAL PARTNERSHIP

There are questions, too, of why so little information about the operations of these organisations, including their finances, is publicly available.

There are no calls for the expropriation of the sporting bodies, or for the government to have control over them. The request is for genuine and accountable partnership between the organisations and national stakeholders, including taxpayers, who mostly pay for the infrastructure that support athletes and athletic competition. They do so willingly on the assumption that sports and sports people are national assets.

So in addition to Mr Samuda’s proposal for a pension scheme, there is a need for a broader and deep discussion on the structure and boundaries of a genuinely national partnership for the management and administration of athletics.

This must include a transparent framework for the funding of track and field athletics and other sports, and the accountability that sporting organisations owe the public. They can’t see themselves as solely private bodies when the mission is national.