That 4x100m women's gold in 1991

Howard Campbell, Gleaner Writer

For winning the sprint double and breaking Bob Beamon's 23-year long jump record, Katrin Krabbe and long jumper Mike Powell are usually cited as the outstanding performers from the third World Championships in Athletics which took place in Tokyo, Japan in 1991.

But the Jamaica 4x100 metres team of Dahlia Duhaney, Juliet Cuthbert, Beverley McDonald and Merlene Ottey also put in golden performances. They won that event in convincing fashion to cop the country's only gold medal at the meet.

The 1991 victory was personally gratifying for Cuthbert, who first made the Jamaica senior team as a 16-year-old for the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Just two years earlier, she had given birth to her son, and made the Jamaica team after a rigid training regimen.

"I was looking forward to 1991, it was really a comeback year for me and the World Championships would be a test," Cuthbert, now 47, told The Gleaner recently.

Cuthbert competed in the 100 metres where the competition was fierce.

There was Ottey, a perennial force on the grand prix circuit, the cocky American Gwen Torrence and Krabbe, the German golden girl and European sprint champion.

The East Germany-born Krabbe won the 100 metres convincingly ahead of Torrence and Ottey, with Cuthbert finishing sixth in the final. The medal placings were the same in the 200 metres, but Cuthbert said the Jamaicans fancied their chances in the sprint relay in which herself and Ottey were involved.

Great camaraderie

"There was great camaraderie among us," Cuthbert recalled. "It wasn't like the foolishness that goes on now with all the personality clashes."

Jamaica won their semi-final ahead of Nigeria with the team of Duhaney, Cuthbert, McDonald and Merlene Frazer. Their chances of winning the final got an even bigger boost when the vaunted United States team (Carlette Guidry, Esther Jones, Dannette Young and Evelyn Ashford) failed to finish their semi-final. That race went to the Germans which had Krabbe and the talented Heike Drechsler in their line-up.

Cuthbert said given their reputation, the Jamaicans regarded the Americans as their greatest threat. Despite the presence of Krabbe, Drechsler and the emerging Grit Breur, there was not as much concern about the Germans.

"The Americans are always good, you just can never count them out. We wanted them in the race because we knew we could beat them," Cuthbert said. She added that there were no problems re the composition of Jamaica's team for the final.

"Because I'm a really good 200 metres runner and curve runner it would either be the second or third leg for me. Merlene would anchor ... She felt she could run down anyone down that stretch," she explained.

It turned out to be a perfect race for the Jamaicans who won in 41.94 seconds ahead of Russia (42.20) and Germany (42.33).

The Tokyo World Championships completed a strong comeback year for the competitive Cuthbert who intensified her training with Ottey in preparation for the Olympics in Barcelona the following year.

The hard work paid off. Cuthbert was a silver medalist in the sprint events in Spain and was selected Jamaica's Sportswoman of the Year for 1992.