'Mi say people, are you ready ...'

DAEGU, South Korea:

A lot of people may believe that athletes, even Jamaicans, are readily available and accessible to Jamaican media representatives at major meets such as the IAAF World Championships in Athletics. Well, those people are wrong!

First of all, it literally takes a day to gain access to the Athletes' Village (which is where all athletes reside during the championships) due to the tiresome access application system, which requires you to submit a written request 24 hours in advance. Sure, it has been around for a while but that doesn't excuse it from being annoying nonetheless.

This request, by the way, must be signed by the team's manager, in this case Grace Jackson, before it can be approved. So in the event that the team official cannot be reached or is otherwise occupied, it then leaves the media representative to stand outside the massive Athletes' Village and wait in hope to see a Jamaican athlete or official pass by and ask (sometimes beg) them to take the request to the manager and have it signed.

No guarantees

It doesn't stop there. When you return to the Athletes' Village the following day to activate the pass that you have already gone through so much to obtain, you now have to once again wait for the manager to meet you at the entrance and accompany you inside the residential area. You will not under any circumstance be allowed to enter on your own, and no other team member or official can take you in, just the poor manager, who already has a million and one things to do.

This was not always the case at these championships.

Now, after all of that, there is no guarantee that you will see the athletes in their apartments or that they will even speak.

Yesterday, for instance, Ricardo Makyn and I, along with Bryan Cummings, who represents another local media outlet, and a Tobagonian friend of ours decided to take a trip to the village, guerrrilla style. There were no passes in hand, just big hopes.

Two hours later, not a single Jamaican had appeared.

Brigitte Foster-Hylton made a cameo appearance, peering through a window and soothing our disheartened spirits with a few minutes of conversation from her fifth-floor apartment.

A few minutes later:

"Oi man, wah gwaan?" Usain Bolt had spotted us from his apartment.

"Yow, we deh yah enuh, wah yuh deh pon? Come gi we a link." Patois filled the air and a few volunteers could be heard trying to repeat some of the words. It was rather amusing and trust me, you don't want to hear a Korean trying to speak Patois for the first time.

Since we are talking about Bolt, you know, the more I listen to him talk and watch him seamlessly shift into his media-mode during interviews or wherever there is a flashing camera, the more I marvel at the tremendous transformation that we have all witnessed from a schoolboy to a global icon.

Bolt is a brand here, and everywhere else for that matter, and it's obvious that he is well aware of this and is also well able to keep his image where it needs to be.

'Are you ready?'

The star guest of a Puma/JAAA press conference yesterday, Bolt was his ever-playful self; chanting a few archetypal ska/reggae slangs and skanking along as the music rocked the hall shortly after his question-and-answer session:

"So mi say people, are you ready? Blow! Oh Lord," he sang ... some foreigners oblivious to the connection but amused nonetheless.

It was a good presentation by the athlete and he made sense throughout, except when he foolishly suggested: "By the way, I know that some of you in here won't like this, but Manchester United will win the Premier League again this year."

Some clapped and cheered, including the gullible Mr Makyn, but I booed; a deep-gutted boo. I was not about to sit there and allow Mr Bolt to spew such nonsense all over the place. Who does he think he is, Paul the psychic Octopus?