Jamaica has had a long tradition in the 400 metres, male and female. Fans of track and field world wide are aware of the exploits of Herb McKenley, Arthur Wint, Derrick Rhoden and Les Laing from 1948 at the Olympics in London to the Helsinki Games in 1952.

That tradition continued over the years and gave rise to other talents like Seymour Newman, Bert Cameron, Gregory Haughton, Roxbert Martin, Michael McDonald, and Davian Clarke. On the women’s side Marilyn Neufville, Sandie Richards, Lorraine Graham, Novelene Williams and now Shericka Williams have kept the torch burning bright.

However, the brilliance among the men has dulled just a bit in recent times. Jamaica’s mile relay team has failed the medal in the last two major championships and there really has not been an outstanding 400 metre runner from the Jamaican ranks in very recent history. Well, it would be more accurate to say, not many.

Germaine Gonzales, who has gone below 45 seconds over the distance, has been beset by injury and last season, though he was relatively healthy, looked a shadow of himself. Maybe he needs another season to get back to the shape where he will once again put his hand up as a premier 400 metre runner but we’re hearing him talking about taking up the 400 metre hurdles so maybe he has given up on himself. If that is the case it would be pity if he did because I think he still is still capable of being more than a decent 400-metre runner.

That being said runners like Lansford Spence and Sanjay Ayre are not going to raise any eyebrows with their talent so it comes down to two kids, who I believe could make an impact by 2011.

Two-time national champion, Ricardo Chambers has vowed to go after Roxbert Martin’s national record of 44.49s next season and there is no reason why he will not get there. Chambers, 25, has run as fast as 44.62s but illness derailed his season. He only managed a season’s best of 45.13s in the quarter-finals. However, given that he ran 44.80 in 2008, shows that he has still got it and now under the guidance of Glen Mills, whom he said, has helped him immensely in understanding how to run the 400 metres, 44.30 or faster should not be out of the question for 2010. If he gets there it would be the perfect launching pad for him to contend as a medallist in Daegu come 2011.

Another promising prospect is 23-year-old Dwight Mullings, the younger brother of world championship sprint relay gold medallist Steve Mullings, who was also a finalist in the fastest 200 metres sprint ever run in Berlin last August. Mullings finished fifth in a personal best 19.98s behind Usain Bolt who shattered his own world record.

Dwight clocked a fast 44.98s last season for Mississippi State and only missed the Jamaican national championships because of passport issues that he was unable to resolve in time to participate.

Like his brother, Dwight has good speed, having gone as fast as 20.73 over the 200 metres. There is not much else to go on but having run under 45 seconds suggests that there is talent there that can take him much further and much faster too.

We will see what the future holds but between Chambers and Mullings, Jamaica’s tradition in the quarter-mile run seems set for a resurgence in the very near future.

Congratulations to Usain Bolt and Sanya Richards for being named the IAAF Male and Female Athletes of 2009, respectively. Bolt was always going to win. Who else would even be close to challenging him?

Perhaps, Kenenisa Bekele of Ethiopia, who has been as dominant in the 5000 and 10,000 metres as Bolt has been in the sprints, but who has been dominant even longer than Bolt has been. Bekele is perhaps the greatest distance runner of the modern era, but the truth is whether people will openly admit it or not the sprints are the glamour events, not the distance runs.

Bolt was truly dominant this past season, 11 finals unbeaten with two world records. His name was on that crystal trophy since August.

It must have been a closer vote on the women’s side. Sanya Richards was dominant, yes, but so was Croation high jumper Blanca Vlasic, who had the second highest jump in history 2.08 metres in Croatia on August 31, a week after she had secured her second World Championship title in Berlin.

Either way, I am not too perturbed by the final choices. What bothers me though is that Clyde Hart was chosen as coach of the year. Hart trains Richards, the Female Athlete of the Year and former world number one in the 400 metres Jeremy Wariner, who has been displaced by LeShawn Merritt as the best 400 metre runner in the world. Merritt is also now World and Olympic champion.

Richards is the only current champion Hart coaches so it boggles my mind that he would be the choice for Coach of the Year. That title, I believe, deserves to be in Papine sitting in a display case or on a desk inside the Dr. Alfred Sangster Auditorium. That trophy should have been won hands down by MVP head coach Stephen Francis and here’s why.

At the 12th IAAF World Athletic Championships in Berlin, Francis’ athletes won three individual gold medals, one silver and one bronze medal. His athletes were also responsible for one individual national record and one championship record that was also the second fastest time in history. MVP athletes were also members of two gold-medal winning relay teams, one of which set a championship record that is the second fastest time in history.

In my book that is a no-contest.

As much as he has the personality Attila the Hun, Francis is a great coach, the best in the world today and perhaps for the last 10 years.

Hart has done great things and is easily the best 400 metre coach of this generation and perhaps of all time, having coached Michael Johnson, Sanya Richards, and Jeremy Wariner. But, Francis has coached Shelly Ann Fraser Olympic and World 100-metre champion; Melaine Walker, Olympic and World 400-metre hurdles champion and the second fastest woman of all time over the distance; Brigette Foster Hylton, World 100-metre hurdles champion, Kaliese Spencer, World Junior 400-metre hurdles champion; and Asafa Powell, four-time world record holder and a man who has run faster than 10 seconds 60 times; 29 times faster than 9.90. Powell also won a bronze medal in the 100 metres in Berlin.

Maybe Francis’ actions leading up to the world championships this past August had something to do with the decision. It shouldn’t because that was nothing about his coaching and more to do with his personality, but as I said before even though we don’t care to admit it, a person’s popularity does affect the way we treat them.

If that is indeed the case then Francis’ behaviour may have cost him a title he truly deserved.

Asafa Powell launched his foundation last week at the Pegasus Hotel. The event was attended by several of his MVP teammates, members of Government and track and field administrators.

Most of the officials in attendance would do well to note what the launch of the foundation was about. “I would like, in a structured and organised way to help others, especially those who have the necessary ability but cannot afford the gear, the meals, the medication, the bus fare, and the school books. This is what has led me to form this foundation,” Powell gave as his reason for starting the foundation.

Delano Franklyn is the chairman of the foundation that is going to be run by a 12-member board constituted primarily of independent businessmen and educators. He explained on my radio show Sportsnation that airs on Newstalk93fm that funding is expected to come by several means including sponsorships, contributions and generally leveraging the name Asafa Powell internationally. I suppose that events like the concert that the foundation has planned for early December will also contribute to the coffers of the foundation that aims to help kids at the very foundation of what has become our success in athletics.

By whatever means the funds are raised, what the foundation plans to do will be very much welcome and needed in this country. There are so many kids out there who need the guidance and the financial support that will enable them to break the cycle of poverty they were born into. It will also ultimately help develop talents that will rival Asafa’s and perhaps Usain Bolt’s.

The advent of such a programme does, however, raise questions about what the authorities have been doing. We see in West Indies cricket where the administrators sat back during the heyday of the sport, thinking that the region would continue to churn out world class cricketers forever. We have now come to see that that never came to pass and the region’s team now languishes at the bottom of the world rankings.

It is true that the high school programme does help unearth vast amounts of talent here, but what happens next? Between high school, college and the professional circuit Jamaica loses much of its talent because there is no system in place that keeps them from falling through the chasms that exist between the two planes.

In this country we love to fiddle while Rome burns but there are ways in which the Jamaica Amateur Athletic Association in conjunction with the Ministry of Sport and the private sector can provide a safety net that will help us keep most of our athletes from disappearing into the night.

A semi-pro series of meets could be one option. Meets could be set up in Kingston and Montego Bay, and regional athletes invited. A group of regional sponsors as well as the respective governments could throw together a plan that would include broadcasting and advertising that would generate money by which the athletes could be paid fees that would go some way into covering their expenses, providing them with the means to continue training and afford themselves a better way of life until they can break into the pro-circuit.

The key would be to market these meets so that the crowds would turn out in droves to watch the next crop of great athletes emerge and in doing so create the right atmosphere for an event that could be broadcasted across the region and perhaps into Europe, especially since so many of the region’s athletes are so well recognised there. Sponsors would get maximum exposure which could lead to greater profits and the eventual sustainability of their sponsorship packages.

It’s a very vague idea, I know, but something tangible could be created from such an idea and there are other ideas too that can be fleshed out into workable solutions.

I say all this to say that its time that the sports administrators and the Government start looking at feasible ways to sustain the growth of the sport and stop depending totally on great ideas coming from people like Asafa Powell and Usain Bolt.

And they need to act now. After all, Powell and Bolt won’t be around forever.

Glen Mills shocked the local fraternity last week when he pretty much announced through the print media that he was stepping down as Jamaica’s head coach. Mills had been in that position for the past 22 years and he thinks its time for him to step aside.

Mills has served this country well for more than 40 years, developing some of Jamaica’s best schoolboy talent. Raymond Stewart, the youngest ever male sprinter to make an Olympic 100metres final was barely out of Camperdown High School when he made it to the final of the men’s sprint finals in Los Angeles back in 1984.

Stewart would go on to represent Jamaica well over the years. He was not as successful as the current crop of sprinters but he was consistently among the eight fastest men on the planet. Mills also helped develop other talented athletes who for one reason or the other did not go on to fulfil their potential. Everybody speaks about what a prodigious talent Leroy Reid was but injury would have a major say in his truncated career as a sprinter.

There were others like Carey Johnson and females like Rivoli Campbell, who promised much whilst they were under Mills’ guidance but who faded into the US Collegiate landscape like so many who had gone before them.

Coach Mills, who just last year was honoured for his excellence in the field of track and field, will now dedicate his time and energy to developing his own track club Racers’ and reap further richly deserved rewards as the coach of the fastest man who has ever lived, Usain Bolt.

Bolt is in many ways the reward that eluded Mills throughout his illustrious career. He never really had a breakout athlete, someone who transcended the sport, someone who redefined the way we looked at track and field.

Bolt himself was rewarded for having faith in Mills, after he struggled to hone his amazing talents under Fitz Coleman. Bolt had worked with Coleman for a couple years at the IAAF High Performance Centre but the latter was never able to get a handle on Bolt’s medical challenges and his focus. The youngster from Trelawny was on the verge of fading away like so many talented sprinters before him, distracted by the bright lights of the city and a misplaced belief that he could run with the best in the world on talent alone. That was until fate intervened and landed him on a platter to Coach Mills who it seemed was destined to guide the youngster to greatness.

It took a while but the two soon developed a solid relationship that has now blossomed until a partnership that now rules the world of athletics. Mills is the medium through which Bolt has achieved greatness and Bolt’s greatness will earn Mills a brighter, higher place in the annals of the history of track and field. He will be remembered as the man who took a diamond in the rough and made it shine brighter than any that had gone before.
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