Jamaican spirit, with a heart of gold
Athletes so strong, so proud and bold
Uniting Jamaicans wherever they are
Jamaican sun, Jamaican star

The blazing and amazing, Jamaican team
Fulfilling for all the Jamaican dream
The world celebrates jump and shout
We name Jamaican everybody chat bout

And when wi look and see a how yuh do yuh ting ting
How yuh light up di place wid yuh JaZwing zwing
Pride and joy inna mi hear a weh yuh bring bring
And pony uh chest, a weh dem put yuh bling

You spread your wings your spirit cannot hide (chat bout)
You run your race with god as your guide
Green black and gold the victory in your stride
You fill us all with pride

Sometimes when you bolt out of di block block
Is like di rest of dem a dead from shock, shock
Wi have di talent , di speed and di strength, strength
Fi gi di whole a dem a good donkey length

Dem want fi know a how yuh train and what yuh eat eat
A di cassava an di yam meck yuh dweet dweet
But dat a fi wi secret so meck dem fret
Because they ain’t see nutten yet

You spread your wings your spirit cannot hide
You run your race with god as your guide
Green black and gold the victory in your stride
You fill us all with pride
You fill us all with pride
You fill us all with pride

Written by: Joan A. Hutchinson.

With some athletes set to run in the relays being left out the team as a precaution by the JAAA, our game plan will have to be adjusted.

Looking to the 4×100 female relay after superb runs by our females in the 100 metres, who do you think should make up the 4×100 and in what order?

The USA also has a great sprint relay team, who do you think will win the relay final?

Looking to the the 100m relays for men, who should make the team and in what order should it run?

Are our relay teams strong enough to win?

Shelly Ann Fraser has been running from poverty all her life. Now that she has there is still no slowing her down.

Raised in the violent inner-city community of Waterhouse, Fraser has been helped along the way by many people, who together put her on a path to success. Since she has been on that path she has been running faster and faster still.

Anyone who would have witnessed an MVP training camp at the national stadium east early last year, would have seen a tiny ‘pocket rocket’ hurtling out of the starting blocks ahead of  Olympic relay gold medallist Sherone Simpson.

 Simpson is no slouch. In 2006, a year before Fraser joined the Stephen Francis-led MVP track club based at the University of Technology, Simpson was the fastest woman on the planet in the 100 metres with eight of the top 10 times.

She also ran a personal best 10.82 seconds which at the time made her the second fastest Jamaican woman ever behind the legendary Merlene Joyce Ottey, who had clocked an astonishing 10.74 seconds a decade before.

So to see the anonymous little girl blast out of the blocks leaving Simpson behind in a cloud of invisible dust was to disbelieve that it was even possible for that to happen. Surely Simpson, in an effort to boost this little girl’s confidence, was deliberately allowing this upstart to get out ahead of her.

As it turns out there was little Simpson could do. True, she had been recovering from off-season knee surgery but still she had recovered enough to be preparing for the national championships to select a team to the Olympic Games in Beijing, China.

Weeks later Fraser (10.85) would stun the entire nation finishing ahead of Simpson (10.87) but behind Kerron Stewart (10.80), another of this island’s great sprinters, to secure places on the team to China that would return with a record 11 medals, six of them gold.

Fraser returned with one of those gold medals, winning the 100 metre dash in a world leading 10.78 seconds and crowned herself Olympic champion. Suddenly, this obscure little girl had become a star.

Since then, however, Fraser and Stewart both of whom have since eclipsed Simpson and the beloved Veronica Campbell Brown as Jamaica’s premier sprinters have developed an interesting and intense rivalry. They have traded wins at Grand Prix meets and created fireworks whenever they meet on the track.

This season Stewart was the dominant sprinter, having eight of the top 15 fastest times in the world, including an amazing 10.75 seconds in Rome which made her the fifth fastest woman ever and moving past Fraser as Jamaica’s second fastest woman. Fraser was second in a fast 10.91s.

Fraser would, however, top Stewart once more when it really counted – in the finals of the World Championships in Berlin on Monday, August 17.  Using that rocket start that she used to leave Simpson behind, Fraser this time supplanted Ottey as Jamaica’s fastest woman in a world leading 10.73 seconds. Stewart, trying with all her might, finished a hair’s breadth behind tying her personal best of 10.75.

Defending Veronica Campbell was fourth in 10.95s more than 0.20 seconds behind. The title of Jamaica’s fastest ever woman has officially been passed on but it won’t rest easy. Not as long Stewart is around. The battle for fastest woman in Jamaica has now become the battle for the fastest woman in the world.

It seems only right that it should be happening in the crucible of world sprinting – Jamaica.

Bolt breaks 100m world record in 9.58 seconds

Usain Bolt has accomplished in just over a year what it took mankind to do in 30.

Ever since Bolt broke the 100 metre world record for the third time since May 2008, pundits have been running out of superlatives to describe the lanky sprinter from Sherwood Content in Trelawny.

Jim Hines was the first man to dip below 10 seconds for the 100 metre sprint in 1968.
Since that time the record has been lowered gradually by Carl Lewis, Leroy Burrell,
Donovan Bailey, Maurice Greene and Asafa Powell, who lowered the world record from 9.79 to 9.74 seconds. When Powell last set the world record in Rieti, Italy, man had only managed to lower the 100-metres world record a paltry 0.21 seconds.

Than came along Usain Bolt who announced his arrival last year May when an astounding 9.76 seconds, a mere .02 seconds off Powell’s world record. On May 30, 2008, at the Reebok Grand Prix in New York, Bolt began his assault on the 100 metre record that would redefine the way we think about the short sprint. On that rainy night, Bolt clocked 9.72 seconds. Then in August that year in Beijing, Bolt shaved a further .03 seconds off the record he now owned taking it down to 9.69 seconds.

On August 16, one year to the day that he became the first man to legally record a time under 9.70 seconds, chopped a massive .11 seconds off the world mark to 9.58 seconds in a fantastic display of sprinting in the Berlin Olympic stadium.

So, it took man 40 years to lower the world record from 9.95 to 9.74. In just over 15 months Bolt has lopped a massive 0.16 seconds, a truly special accomplishment.

No big surprise though since Bolt seems to churn out special accomplishments on a daily basis. Bolt’s last four races at major championships have all ended with world record performances running faster and faster on each occasion.

Bolt fans rejoice – here’s a frame by frame picture gallery showing the main man cruise through to this evening’s second round of the 200 metres.

Click here to view the pictures

THE highlight of this morning was the return of Bolt to the arena for the Men’s 200 metres. He was joined by a huge showing from fellow Caribbean athletes. Needless to say, he’s through to the next round…. which will be running at approximately 7pm European time – catch it, and him, if you can. See him and many 200m runners from around the Caribbean in the picture gallery here:

Usain Bolt and fellow Carribean athletes race in the 200m

Veronica Campbell Brown and Delloreen Ennis-London talk this morning about their upcoming events, at a press conference held for Adidas sponsored athletes, here in Berlin for the 12th IAAF World Championships in Athletics.

Delloreen said that the line-up for the Women’s hurdles is completely open at The World Championships in Berlin this year – anyone could take a gold she said.

Both athletes explained that they do not get caught up with discussions surrounding the much talked about split in the Jamaican training camps. They, as with the other Jamaican athletes we have spoken to so far, say they are far too busy focussing on their training. Veronica told us that they have managed to find some spare time however – the team enjoyed a traditional German evening out in Nuremberg at a beer and sausage evening.

See pictures and captions in the Sports Caribe photo gallery here.

Click here to see pictures of Usain Bolt, fastest man on the planet, and Jochen Zeitz, CEO and Chairman of PUMA, unveiling Bolt’s new track spikes to kick-off proceedings of the 12th IAAF World Championships in Athletics in Berlin today. A group of excited fans and the media met in a trendy East Berlin restaurant and bar, called Yaam Cafe – aptly named after one of Bolt’s favourite foods…

Usain "Lightening" Bolt

How many times can MVP’s head coach Stephen Francis continue to heap embarrassment upon this country before he is brought to book?

In this latest episode Francis’ athletes – Asafa Powell, Shericka Williams, Brigette Foster, Kaleise Spencer, and Melaine Walker and Shelly Ann Fraser would have not been able to participate at the 12th IAAF World Championships that began this weekend in Berlin, Germany.

All six athletes are among the very best in their respective disciplines. Powell is a four-time world record holder; Brigette Foster Hylton is a two-time world championship medallist; Spencer is a world junior champion and is among the best the 400-metre hurdlers this year; while Walker and Fraser are Olympic gold medallists. These championships would have been a lot poorer without them.

So instead of these athletes going into Berlin focussed and ready to compete they are forced to contend with yet another upheaval initiated by their head coach.

Stephen Francis has had longstanding disputes with members of the Jamaica Amateur Athletic Association (JAAA) and those disputes go far beyond professional differences. That being said, whenever these disputes occur it makes the members of the JAAA look foolish trying to stand up to Francis knowing that his athletes give him significant leverage.

In this latest drama it required the intervention of officials of the IAAF to get the athletes to participate after the JAAA put its foot down, as it should have a long time ago – and requested of the meet organisers that the athletes’ names be removed from the list of participants.

Last year in Beijing it was a similar story.  And there was intervention there too.

It’s time the MVP athletes realise that their coach is doing them more harm than good. His actions are beginning to have a negative effect on his athletes in terms of their popularity and it will eventually begin to affect their earnings as well. This is after all what they do for a living.

In time – that is if nothing is done to sanction him – Francis will find himself with fewer and fewer world class athletes and consequently with none. Maybe then he will see the error of his ways. Maybe then he will understand what people mean when they say that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is defined as insanity.

By then there would be no leverage for him to use, by then it will be too late and he will find in himself a king without a kingdom.

For most people following the 12th IAAF World Championships that begin in Berlin this weekend Usain Bolt seems a lock for the sprint double over defending champion American Tyson Gay.

And you really can’t blame anyone for believing that this is the way things will unfold. The way the 22-year-old star dominated the sprints in Beijing in 2008, breaking the 100 metre world record twice and dipping under 9.80 seconds four times, it would be foolhardy to bet against him.

However, Tyson Gay presents a much bigger challenge than many would realise.

Gay, who was injured during the first round of the men’s 200 metres in the gruelling US Championships in 2008 and did not make it past the semi-finals in the 100 metres in Beijing, used the off season to heal and prepare to take on the seemingly invincible Bolt who has not lost since Asafa Powell edged him over the 100 metres in Stockholm in late July last year.

That defeat offers sort of a blueprint to how the triple Olympic champion can be upset by Gay in Berlin. Bolt is not a great starter but he is able to use exceptional acceleration to compensate. Had this been last season, it would not even matter that his start is still not great but this year it does.

Gay has improved his rate of turnover and is a lot stronger and this has resulted in fast times every time he has stepped on the track this season. He ran a windy 9.75 at the US trials, and followed that up with a very fast 9.77 seconds in Rome and 9.79 w in Stockholm. He also has times of 19.58 seconds and 20.00 for the 200 metres. He is a legitimate threat to Bolt, who has not run quite as fast 9.79 seconds and 9.91 into a -1.7m/s wind which effectively makes the time 9.81 seconds.

Gay has also managed to convince himself that he can beat Bolt and that is half the battle.

If Gay can get his legs going before Bolt gets his long legs under him and begins his superman-like acceleration in the finals of the men’s 100 metres, he could conceivably hold Bolt off long enough to defend his 100-metre crown. Bolt is faster, yes, but his faulty start and his oft-interrupted training schedule that has rendered him a little less sharp this season makes him more vulnerable.

It has been three weeks since Bolt last raced. If he managed to raise his fitness level to close to what it was in Beijing last year he will emerge the winner in Berlin over both short sprints, but if he hasn’t be prepared to be shocked as Gay could short-circuit the lightning Bolt.