Patience is a virtue

It’s August 8, 2012, and Kaliese Spencer rounds the top curve in the 400 metres hurdles final at the London Olympics. She is the only person in the final wearing black, green, and gold. Alive to her patriotic duty, Spencer digs in.

Third at the ninth barrier, her late surge in Lane 8 recovers inches not feet, and the MVP Track Club star is left adrift in fourth.

Nevertheless, she was so good in 2012 that the United States journal Track and Field News ranked her as the best 400 hurdler in the world.

World Junior champion in 2006 and Commonwealth Games champion two years later in 2014, Spencer crossed the speed threshold that once marked 400 metres hurdlers as great – the 53-second barrier. In track and field history, the only Jamaican women to do so are Melaine Walker at 52.42, Spencer at 52.79, and Deon Hemmings at 52.82.

However, that London fourth place and two others from the 2009 and 2011 World Championships meant she had come close to a medal and missed ... until now.

In London, the medals went to Natalya Antyukh of Russia, Lashinda Demus of the United States, and Spencer’s career long rival Zuzana Hejnova of the Czech Republic. However, with the retroactive disqualification of the Russian for a doping violation last week, the empty space in Spencer’s (now Spencer-Carter) trophy case will soon be filled.

She isn’t the first Jamaican woman to receive a medal upgrade this way. Long jumper Chelsea Hammond finished fourth at the 2008 Olympic Games. She, too, has a bronze, after a retroactive doping disqualification for Tatyana Lebedeva, who like Antyukh, is Russian.

Fans expected that Spencer-Carter would step into the shoes of Walker, who won gold at the 2008 Olympics and the 2009 World Championships and silver at the 2011 Worlds. In a way, she did with seven straight seasons, from 2009 to 2015, finding her ranked among the top 10 400 metre hurdlers in the world by Track and Field News.

With the belated bronze, Hemmings, Walker, and Spencer-Carter are the only Jamaican women to win Olympic medals in the 400 hurdles.

Hopefully, Spencer-Carter will receive her medal in front of a full house, perhaps at the ISSA/GraceKennedy Boys and Girls’ Championships, so Jamaicans can give the hurdler her due acclaim. She has waited long enough.