Jamaicans on the track punctuate proud, independent nation

SIXTY YEARS ago, when Jamaica hosted the Central American and Caribbean (CAC) Games in the week after Independence, George Kerr was the hero. He christened the brand new National Stadium with a meet record in the 400 metres.

Since then, track and field has given Jamaicans a sense of pride felt whenever the black-green-and-gold banner is raised.

Lennox ‘Billy’ Miller cemented Jamaica’s romance with sprinting, with a silver in the 100 metres at the 1968 Olympics. Eight years later, in 1976, Donald Quarrie piloted the first post-Independence Olympic gold medal home with a dominant 200-metre win in Montreal, Canada.

Ironically, when the World Championships dawned in 1983, Bert Cameron won the 400 metres, the event that Arthur Wint, George Rhoden and Herb McKenley made Jamaica’s own at the scene of their greatest triumph, the Helsinki Olympic Stadium, where they beat the USA in world record time in the 4x400 in 1952. Cameron won with McKenley at track side, a living connection between the past and the present.

These victories boomed Jamaica’s name far and wide. Along with reggae music and tourism, track and field became a core element in the way the world perceived this country.

The memorable performances continued. Deon Hemmings strode on the shoulders of double 200-metre world champion Merlene Ottey to become the first Jamaican woman to win Olympic gold, 20 years after Quarrie’s Montreal win. When Hemmings zoomed home in record time to take the 400-metre hurdles at the 1996 Olympics, every Jamaican was standing tall.

Pivotal moments arrived in 2004, when Veronica Campbell-Brown won the 200 metres to become the first Jamaican woman to win Olympic gold in a sprint event, and in 2005, when Asafa Powell became the first Jamaican to take sole ownership of the 100-metre world record with a time of 9.77 seconds.

In a way, Powell and his teammates at the MVP Track Club represented true independence. Instead of going abroad to study and train, they stayed home at the University of Technology and became world class.

Those acts of speed by Campbell-Brown and Powell lit a spark. She won the 100 at the 2007 World Championships and led Jamaica to its first double-figure medal haul at that level.

Then came Usain Bolt.

Lightning fast and indivisibly Jamaican, the 6’5” man child blossomed into history’s finest sprinter with five world records and a triple double of Olympic and World gold medals. Best of all, this home-trained Racers Track Club super Jamaican made speed look like fun.

As his reign began, our women stepped forward. Ottey had broken the ice for our women with a 200 bronze in 1980, the year the GC Foster College for Physical Education and Sport opened. 2008 saw another milestone, a 1-2-2 finish by Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, Sherone Simpson and Kerron Stewart in the Olympic 100. Then just 21, the little Pocket Rocket jumped for joy.

Campbell-Brown and Melaine Walker won the 200 and the 400-metre hurdles, respectively, to paint the Beijing Birds Nest in the Jamaican colours.

Fraser-Pryce, who has won a record five World 100-metre titles, and Elaine Thompson Herah have won all the Olympic 100-metre titles from 2008 onward, with Thompson Herah doing an unprecedented double-double in 2016 and 2021.

In all, Jamaica has won 87 Olympic medals, with one coming in 1980 in cycling, and 137 at the World Championships.

The medals, 26 of them gold at the Olympics and 37 from the World Championships, are part of Jamaica’s signature.

They’re like music, ackee and salt fish and sunshine.

If you talk with non-Jamaicans, before long, track and field becomes the topic because it consistently defines an area of excellence for independent Jamaica. As the nation celebrates 60 years of Independence, track and field is a major source of pride.