There are those who will stop at nothing to try and discredit the name of Glen Mills and the Racers’ Track Club.
What happened prior to the start of the 12th IAAF World Athletic Championships with two of Mills’ athletes returning adverse analytical findings was unfortunate, but as Mills explained his athletes had no intent to cheat.
In fact, as Mills said, if there were guilty of anything it was poor judgement.

The supplement Muscle Speed that we now know contained traces of the stimulant 4-Methyl-2-Hexanamine was being used by several athletes. Mills explained that when they checked the website used to peddle the product no mention was made that the supplement contained the stimulant that closely mirrors Tuaminoheptane, a stimulant commonly found in nasal decongestants.
Now, there are those who have a hard time believing that this is the case, but when you look at the material that the Racer’s team have in their possession they make a strong case that its athletes were misled.
The athletes though must take a big share of the blame. If something seems too good to be true it usually is. As a result when the athletes began doing their research and seeing the claims that the supplement’s manufacturers made that the tablets unleash explosive power, alarm bells should have gone off. They should have dug deeper. They should have held off using the supplement until they were absolutely certain.
Mills recognises this and which is why he is setting up a medical panel which will have to approve any supplement an athlete in his camp is considering taking, and only after it is approved will they be allowed to take it.

The club also plans to host several sessions on doping that would be open to all athletes so that such a mistake is not made by any Jamaican athlete in the future.

One has to give credit to the veteran coach. No one could blame him if he decided to close ranks and shut the world out, but instead he opted to help others who may fall into the same trap.

It’s a pity others in the track and field fraternity dont think the same way. Instead of reaching out to support Mills some have tried to use the opportunity to try and tarnish Mills’ reputation as well as that of his athletes.

It’s a pity they cant see that in hurting Mills they hurt all Jamaica. But such is the myopic vision of some of us who claim to have Jamaica’s best interests at heart.

Jamaica may have won the last two wars but the next few are going to be really tough. Since the world championships in Berlin, Germany, American sprinter Carmelita Jeter has gone faster with each race. On the weekend she became the second fastest woman ever when she blew away a fairly strong field in Shanghai, China in 10.64 seconds.

Minutes later at the same meet Tyson Gay equalled Usain Bolt’s previous world record of 9.69, becoming the second man to breach the 9.70-second barrier legally. Notwithstanding the 2m/s wind Gay will go into the off season confident that he can challenge Usain Bolt for the title of best sprinter in the world.

Jeter dusted Veronica Campbell Brown who ran a season’s best 10.89s for second but Jeter was so remarkable she actually seemed to be pulling away at the end of the race and looked very impressive indeed. She would have also cemented her ranking as the number one female sprinter in the world this year.

Sure enough Jeter’s performances following the world championships have had Jamaicans talking about drugs but let’s just give it a rest. Jeter is only now just putting the different pieces of her race together after a season of learning under new coach John Smith who became her coach last November.

She will go into next season full of confidence knowing that she can easily defeat World and Olympic champion Shelly Ann Fraser and World and Olympic silver medallist Kerron Stewart who both have yet to put together a perfect race. Stewart struggles with her start while Fraser – like her MVP short sprinters, struggles with her speed maintenance – her finish. We have seen both women’s flaws this season. Stewart is always a step short at the finish.

With Jeter, who has got her start right and armed with incredible speed maintenance, is taking it to the Jamaican women who dominated earlier on this season. It goes without saying that both Jamaicans have a lot of work to do this off season.

Bolt admittedly is a bit better off. He is only going to get better next season so it’s hard to see Gay really challenging him. Bolt is faster and if not stronger is as equally strong as Gay. Both men run the 200m so they have no issues with maintaining their speed. Here is where the gap begins to widen. Gay is 27 and in his prime. It is conceivable that he does not have much more room for improvement.

Bolt, on the other hand is 23 and not even close to his prime. Coach Glen Mills says Bolt can increase his strength by another 20 per cent. This is huge. If he manages to do that Gay will have to pray for Bolt to have a very bad day or that he gets injured. Bolt is already a tenth or more of a second, faster than Gay.  Even if Gay gets stronger this off season, his strength gains will not match the gains Bolt makes. Bolt also has huge mechanical adjustments to make which when accomplished will make his transitions smoother and make him so much of an efficient sprinter.

Asafa Powell is the one with all the work to do. He is still prone to giving up when he gets caught, like he did on Sunday. He needs to work harder and smarter if he is to stop getting dusted by Gay and Bolt who are gradually opening up a gap on him.

Powell has admitted that he is lazy. He has to recognise that he needs to salvage his reputation as a quitter and choker. He achieved that to some degree in the finals of the men’s 100m in Berlin but he needs to do more.

He needs to stop finding excuses to fail and start finding means to getting back into the game. He owes it to the millions of supporters he has. He is far too talented to be left out of the conversation on the best sprinters of all time. The thing is his window is rapidly closing. He needs to make a move now or very soon the conversation of who were the best sprinters of this era will only be about Tyson Gay and Usain Bolt.

Usain Bolt may have stopped running for the past few days but his latest performances are having significant impact in the local economy, especially for one company that manufactures leisure wear.

Sun Island has been reporting incredibly high volumes of sales of the Usain Bolt line of leisure wear including t-shirts, polo shirts, caps and yoga pants since the world’s fastest man set new records in Berlin starting last weekend. Things have been flying off the shelves ‘incredibly fast’, said Amy White, Manager of Product Development and Design at Sun Island. “We’ve sold out our stock twice. As we produce they’re gone.”

Yesterday at the company’s retail outlet along Molynes Road in Kingston scores of customers – young and old – were observed buying armfuls of Usain Bolt t-shirts, caps, yoga pants among other types of leisure wear.

The company had entered into an agreement with Bolt to produce a line of leisure wear bearing the image and signature of the sprinting phenomenon following his exploits at the Olympics in Beijing, China last year when he won gold medals and set world records in the 100 metres, 200 metres and the 4 x 100 metres relays.

White revealed that as soon as Bolt set the new world record of 9.58 seconds in the 100 metres last week Sunday afternoon, they set about creating designs and starting producing shirts and other types of clothing. She said they even worked through the weekend which is unusual for them. And as soon as they were done local retailers and ‘people off the street’ have been snapping them up.

Bolt, she said, has been having a huge impact on the company’s bottom line because otherwise sales have been slow, largely due to the state of the economy. The Bolt factor also extends to other businesses as well. White said all the raw material that is used to manufacture the Bolt line of product is made locally, so his success is helping keep people in their jobs.

With that in mind she hopes she does not see an end to the spike in sales anytime soon. However, realistically she believes the current sales boost will last between two and four more weeks by which time new designs for the Bolt line will be ready for sale.

The Bolt line she says has generally been successful as there has been a steady flow of sales since its creation last year. The current spike, White says, is similar to what the company experienced following the 2008 Olympic Games.

Bolt has had a similar effect on product manufactured by his main sponsor Puma that reported that all their product that was brought into Berlin for the 12th IAAF World Athletics Championships, sold out before the championships ended on Sunday.

Market research has also shown that since Bolt’s exploits in Beijing in 2008, his media market value has been estimated at more than 230 million euro or more than US$320 million. The media market value is tantamount to the amount of money Bolt’s main sponsors Puma would have to spend to get an amount of exposure equal to what Bolt has given them in the market place.

Usain Bolt does everything fast.  He runs fast and he earns money really fast.

In five days in Berlin Bolt, he made almost J$30 million. Two individual wins in world record time equals US$320,000 plus about US$16,000 from his share of the 4×100metre relay. That’s about US$336,000.

Not bad for a less than a week’s work. Work here is defined as actual days when he performed on the track.

How many Jamaican individuals earn at that rate? I can’t even think of many companies that earn money as quickly as that.

On Thursday, without doing anything Bolt earned an additional J$8.9 million or another US$100,000. When you factor in his appearance fee estimated at about US$250,000 per meet, Bolt would have earned almost US$800,000 after the world championships for three days’ work.

All together that works out to about US$1.2 million or about J$107 million for eight days’ work! That’s J$13 million a day, an incredible rate of earning.

World record holder, Usain Bolt

I interviewed Usain Bolt when he was 16-years-old back when he was still wet behind the ears. At the time, though his talent was easily recognisable, he was still a shy, very shy and seemingly insecure individual. He had yet to fully understand the talent that he has been blessed with or what was required to bring it to full bloom.

Now 23, with the world at his feet Usain Bolt has come of age. Watching him at the press conference at the Terra Nova Hotel on Monday, September 14, 2009, I was in awe at the ease with which he played with the audience, the ease with which he made us laugh, the ease with which he communicated his thoughts. It was so much better than when we first met all those years ago. He was so charming; not a term Jamaicans hear a lot these days.

Bolt has charmed the world and they have fallen in love with him. They adore his antics and are amazed by his blazing speed. Bolt has brought personality back to a sport that in addition to the many drug scandals lacked people who were interesting.

With the exception of a few athletes track and field lacked personalities. You can hate Maurice Greene all you want but he was exciting to watch. We all remember the time when he had someone spray his spikes with a fire extinguisher. But, there are several other who come to mind – Jon Drummond, the clown prince of track and field, and even Shawn Crawford more recently.

Generally Jamaican athletes come off as being very dour and introverted, boring. Most have the personality of a shoe box. They are hard to watch when they are not racing. It is even harder to listen to their rehearsed phrases and statements.

Bolt brings a different kind of personality. He is more playful and witty. His dance moves and pre-race antics are worth the price of admission. His spirit is infectious. All of a sudden everybody is dancing at track meets, the Americans, the Europeans and all the Africans! When was the last time you saw a Kenyan dancing at a track meet after winning a race?

Usain Bolt is the booster shot that track and field needed and I hope he stays around for a very long time.

On Sunday American Carmelita Jeter blew away Jamaica’s top two female sprinters,  Shelly Ann Fraser and Kerron Stewart at the World Athletics Finals (WAF) in Thessaloniki, Greece, to become the third fastest woman of all time.

Only Florence Griffith Joyner (10.49) and Marion Jones (10.65) have run faster.

In scorching the track in an amazingly fast 10.67 seconds, she not only took the world lead and will also finish as the number one female sprinter for 2009, but she also threw the gauntlet down to the Jamaican women who have dominated sprinting for the past few years.

Stewart (10.75), Fraser (10.73), Veronica Campbell Brown (10.85) and Sherone Simpson (10.82) have for the past few years made their mark as the world’s premier sprinters. In the last two years especially, the Jamaican women have pushed the Americans so far aside you felt as though we were going to dominate well into the next decade as the eldest of these ladies is only 27 years old. In the last two major meets, Jamaican women took five of six medals in the women’s sprints and three of six at these recently concluded world championships.

However rivalries are what make sports such a great endeavour and Jeter just created a real rivalry – 10.67s in the faces of her Jamaican rivals. Jeter has perhaps three good years left. She is 31. But providing she can stay healthy it will be a real battle royal between Jeter and the Jamaicans perhaps right up until London 2012.

Stewart, Fraser, Simpson and Campbell Brown will be faster next year and so will Jeter.

Some memorable battles await on the horizon.

Will Jamaican athletes continue their dominance at this weekend’s World Athletics Finals (WAF) in Thessaloniki, Greece? I am not so sure.

In the weeks immediately preceding the 12th IAAF World Athletics Championships in Berlin, Germany, Jamaica’s elite athletes who had been battling injuries and poor form, suddenly hit their stride. It was just in time too, because early in the season it seemed like the exploits in Beijing were going to be proven to be a fluke – one extraordinary peaking of all this country’s athletic talent in one place at the same time. But what happened in Berlin washed away all those fears and cemented the notion that Jamaica had finally arrived as a true world sprint power.

However, since their latest amazing exploits in Berlin only a handful of the athletes have been performing well. Usain Bolt continues to do amazing things despite his admission that he is fatigued and Asafa Powell, who often leaves his best performances for late in the season have been great. Brigette Foster Hylton, too, has been exceptional. She has not lost since winning her first world title, and Dwight Thomas has been stepping up.

 However, Shelly Ann Fraser, Shericka Williams and Kerron Stewart, especially, have been looking really tired. And, Melaine Walker has also not been looking as sharp. Maybe they’ve lost focus coming off the emotional high having achieved so much in Berlin, or they’re just suffering from physical fatigue. Whatever it is, these women are not going into these WAF overwhelming favourites.

Bolt will win the 200 metres barring an act of God. The 100 metres will be between Powell and Gay, and Brigette Foster Hylton, armed with her new-found confidence, should be favoured to win the 100 metre hurdles. The other events, however, are dicey. Carmelita Jeter, I think, will start as favourite to win the women’s 100 metres. Since Berlin she has beaten both Stewart and Fraser twice and looks certain to continue that trend. She seems fresher and stronger than the two Jamaicans and I fancy her winning on the weekend. Of course, SAF always comes to run at the big events, and this is a big event. I am just not sure if it’s big enough.

Stewart looks like she wants to go home more than anything else. She is entered in both the 100 metres and 200 metres. She may well lose both. She goes up in the 200 metres against world champion Alyson Felix, already one of the greatest female sprinters of all time and perhaps the greatest female combination sprinter in history. Stewart might be faster but Felix is stronger and with a personal best of 10.93 seconds in the 100m is no slouch either.

Sanya Richards, like Usain Bolt, will win the women’s 400 metres but unless Shericka Williams manages to put in a much better performance than she has in the last two weeks, the silver will elude her grasp, like it did in her last outing.

Danny McFarlane and Isa Phillips will be competitive but we have not seen much from them to inspire confidence in recent weeks.

Melaine Walker, the second fastest woman of all time, looked tired her last time out but her American rival Lashinda Demus, who was ungracious in defeat in Berlin, might not be 100 per cent healthy which evens the odds a bit. Who wins will depend on who wants it more. That being said, don’t be surprised in Kaleise Spencer steals the show.

Overall though, win or lose Jamaican athletes will be in the mix and I am sure they will do us proud. They deserve all the love and rest they can get because it has been a challenging season.

Veronica Campbell Brown in her online diary this week declared her unwavering loyalty to Jamaica following the reported bust up in Berlin where she was reported to have walked out on the women’s 4×100 metre relay team because she was told 90 minutes before the finals of the relays that she would not be running the anchor leg.

We may never know the truth about what happened but it did tarnish the success that the athletes achieved in Berlin. That, and the embarrassing impasse between the Jamaica Amateur Athletics Association (JAAA), killed some of the euphoria that would have been experienced by Jamaicans.

However, it is encouraging that Veronica seemed to have quickly put the situation behind her and is ready to focus on her future. What that future will be is already the subject of much debate. Should Veronica abandon her ambitions of becoming the Olympic 100 metre champion and concentrate solely on the 200 metres or should she continue to pursue her ambitions even though at the moment they seem unattainable.

Logic would suggest the former, and here’s why. While Veronica is a great champion – it is no easy feat defending an Olympic 200 metre crown – and has won gold medals at every level since her junior years, it is hard to see her achieving that gold medal at the Olympics in the 100 metres.

For one, there are just too many people running faster right now. Veronica is currently the fourth fastest Jamaican female sprinter. For her to even make the team as a 100 metre participant she would have to overcome Shelly Ann Fraser, who at 22 is already tied for the third fastest woman of all time. Her personal best of 10.73 is already 0.12 seconds faster than Veronica. That is a little more than the gap between Tyson Gay and Usain Bolt at in the finals of the men’s 100 metres at the world championships in Berlin; and in the sprints that is equivalent to a city block. Veronica is very capable of going as fast as Fraser and maybe she will achieve that time one day soon, but at the next Olympic Games in 2012 Veronica will be 31 years old, Fraser 26. One would be on the downside of her sprinting career, the other in her prime.

It would be foolhardy though to suggest that Veronica would not be able to upset the apple-cart by then because only a fool discounts a champion like VCB. Very few expected her to win the 100 metres world title in Osaka in 2007 but she did. She may very well have a few more surprises in store in the years ahead.

I just think that there are too many people in her way. Another of those is Kerron Stewart, who now that she has decided to focus solely on the 100 metres, is running faster than she ever has. When she clocked 10.75 seconds over the distance in Rome she became the fifth fastest woman in history and even though she finished second at the championships in Berlin in the same (10.75s), it must not be lost on observers that she ran that time after enduring three qualifying rounds. It would suggest that fresh, Kerron could go a lot faster.

Then there is the little darling of Jamaican track and field Sherone Simpson, who in 2006 clocked an amazing 10.82 seconds running into a 0.7 m/s headwind. Without the resisting wind her time would have been about 10.77 seconds. If Simpson can manage to remain healthy there is no reason to believe that she will not be able to attain those standards once more, but only if she can remain injury free. Those bad knees of hers could cause her to retire early.

Campbell Brown also has similar concerns. She has never been able to remain healthy the year after a major championships and this year was no different. An inflamed toe and a strained hamstring hampered her training and cost her a medal in Berlin.

Perhaps if she dropped the 100 metre and focussed on the half-lap herb body would hold up a lot better because of the lesser work load. That way, she could realistically go for an unprecedented three-peat in London.

If she accomplishes that she would make history and maybe she could live with never winning an Olympic 100 metre title.

There was a time not long ago when Jamaicans would be happy if their athletes returned from a major athletics meet with a medal or two. If we got four or five, we’d be beside ourselves with great pride and joy. Throw in a gold medal and we’d be over the moon.

Since the world championships began in 1983 and before the Berlin championships this past August, Jamaica had won 67 medals including seven gold medals. In eight days in Berlin we doubled our gold medal count, from seven to 14, just like that.

In fact, these past two years Beijing and now Berlin – Jamaica has won 13 gold medals at global competitions. Is there anyway we can go back to the past now?

Well, from the looks of things not any time soon. If our current crop of athletes remain healthy, Jamaica should be able to secure bunches of gold medals for at least the next five to seven years. The greatest sprinter in history Usain Bolt is only 23. If he can remain healthy and motivated and continues to run the short sprints, Bolt could secure three more gold medals at the Commonwealth Games in India next year October, at the World Championships in Daegu in 2011 and at the Olympics in London in 2012. That’s a possible nine gold medals over the next three years!

That would give him 15 gold medals overall.

Also, it could go on for another three years after that. Bolt will be 27 after the Olympics in London. He will be in his prime. That sets him up perfectly for another three world championships – 2013, 2015 and 2017, the Commonwealth Games in 2014, and one more Olympics in 2016. All things being equal Bolt could end his career with an astonishing 30 gold medals, with 24 from major championships.

Of course, for the relays he would need a supporting cast. No problem there. Yohan Blake, Dexter Lee, Lerone Clarke, Nesta Carter, Steve Mullings and, of course, if Jahzeel Murphy comes through, Jamaica will have more than its fair share of elite male sprinters in the near future ready to follow Bolt’s lead. And let’s not forget, Asafa Powell has maybe another four or five good years left in him.

On the women’s side, Shelly Ann Fraser, Kerron Stewart and Sherone Simpson are all young and fast, very fast. These three women are among the fastest who have ever lived and could very well dominate in the years to come. Veterans like Veronica Campbell-Brown should also continue her battles with Alyson Felix for at least another four years, and of course, there are several promising young guns on the horizon.

These would include athletes like Simone Facey, Aneisha McClaughlin, Kaleise Spencer, Jura Levy, and the Tracey sisters.

The long and short of it is that Jamaica’s chances of continuing to win gold medals at future championships are pretty good right now.

We just need to find a few more coaches other than Glen Mills and Stephen Francis who can hone the available talent and turn them into world beaters.

World Champion in 100m Hurdles

In all the hoopla surrounding the success of Usain Bolt at the recently concluded world athletic championships in Berlin, the achievements of Brigette Foster-Hylton have almost gone un-noticed.

However, for all the hype that surrounds Bolt and his incredible accomplishments, Brigette’s story is perhaps the better one; the one that speaks more to the strength of human character as opposed to accomplishment. Brigette has both.

In the mid 1990s when knee surgeries threatened to end a promising career that began at St Elizabeth Technical High and continued at Texas State University, no one could have blamed Brigette if she had taken a decision then and there to quit.

But she didn’t. She persevered and sought out and eventually found the coach she needed in Stephen Francis. He became her mentor, her coach, her friend. That friendship was what got her back to competing this year when after failing to win a medal at the Beijing Olympics in China in 2008, Brigette announced her retirement. Another injury had once again frustrated her efforts to prove that she could be the best in the world.

In a career that has had more ups than downs, it seemed like the right thing to do. Less than five years after Francis became her coach Brigette went into the world championships in Paris, among the favourites to win the world title. Her stock improved when overwhelming favourite American Gail Devers stumbled and fell and did not make it to the final. Now firmly favoured to take the crown Brigette was upset and upstaged by Canadian Perdita Felicien. She was forced to settle for silver. Two years later in Helsinki on a wet track American Michelle Perry won gold, Brigette was third.

For the next four years Brigette would not win any medals at any of the majors – Osaka or Beijing and last season she lost her shoe contract. Surely now, this would be the end.
But Francis urged her to come back.

This time she was not a favourite. She was not even considered a contender but she was healthy and under no pressure at all. She eased through the rounds looking more impressive each time.

This time she put it all together. All the years of injuries, surgeries and frustration were wiped away in just 12.51 seconds. Brigette Foster Hylton was finally champion of the world.