There are no major championships to look forward to next year but 2010 is expected to be an exciting year in track and field nonetheless.

Most of our major stars of track and field have not yet committed to the Commonwealth Games, which having been scheduled for October, looks certain to go ahead without many of the sport’s major draws who will by then be preparing for Daegu in 2011.

However, long before that are the indoor meets that will see at least two Jamaicans participating – Veronica Campbell Brown and Ricardo Chambers.

Campbell Brown under new coach Anthony Carpenter will be venturing back indoors after a six-year hiatus. For her it is as good a time as any to be back. She will need lots of time to adjust to whatever new programs Carpenter will have her on and there is nothing like competition to work out the kinks.

VCB knows she has fallen behind in the sprints and will have to refocus and relaunch to get back among the medal contenders in the 100 metre sprint.

Beset by injury thoughout the last season, VCB will be looking to rebound strongly, building momentum going into 2011.

Chambers, the national 400 metre champion, also had a challenging 2009 season. Allergies derailed any attempt he had planned to make at a medal at the world championships in Berlin.

His goals for this coming season include winning a world indoor medal at the World Indoor Championships in March and he also hopes to break Roxbert Martin’s 12-year-old national 400 metre record.

Armed now with the experience of how to control the allergies that messed him up this past season, Chambers should be a much stronger and better 400 metre runner when he emerges this coming season.

2010 is also a year when we expect to see Yohan Blake emerge even further as a world class sprinter. After his 9.93s clocking in Rome, the world waited to see what Blake was going to bring to the world championships in Berlin but that was not to be thanks to the Methyhexamine scandal that truncated his promising season.

Now that he has served his three-month ban arising from that situation, track and field fans will no doubt be eager to see what Blake brings to the track in 2010.

2010 will also witness the dawn of the new Diamond League that replaces the Golden League. We get to see just how it plays out, we get to see what happens with the lesser athletes and most importantly, we get to see what happens when the elite of the elite clash.

Usain Bolt, Tyson Gay and Asafa Powell will do battle at least three times this coming season and those races can’t come fast enough. Will Bolt break his world records in amazing fashion once more? Can Tyson Gay take Bolt, who has not lost in two years? Or, will Asafa Powell overtake them both and regain his place atop the heap of world’s greatest sprinters?

Yes, the Diamond League is going to be worth watching this coming season.

But the Diamond League is not only going to be about Bolt, Gay and Powell. The women are going to make some noise too.
Shelly Ann Fraser, Kerron Stewart and Carmelita Jeter are going to resume their electric clashes, and when you throw in a healthy Sherone Simpson, a determined Lauryn Williams, Muna Lee, and perhaps VCB into the mix, what you get are mother-watering battles in the female sprints like the world has never seen.

And how could I forget Melaine Walker aiming to break the world record in the 400 metre hurdles even while inflicting further mental damage to sore loser American Lashinda Demus.

The 400 metre battles between Jeremy Wariner and Leshawn Merritt are also sure to be tantaliszing.

Locally, Champs celebrates 100 years and that too is shaping up to be special as defending champions Kingston, Calabar, Jamaica College, Wolmer’s (under new coach Paul Francis), and St. Jago resume their intense rivalries at the national stadium the week before Easter.

We also get to see what surprises Jazeel Murphy is going to spring on us this coming season.

On the women’s side Holmwood, Manchester, Vere and all the usual suspects will be make Champs for this coming season, a must-see event.

And of course, there are going to be some real surprises as there are sure to be a handful of athletes who are going to raise eyebrows and grab the attention of the world of track and field.

So, what are we waiting for bring on 2010. Please.

Jamaica can boast to being home to two of the three fastest men of all time – Usain Bolt and Asafa Powell. Bolt, the Olympic and World champion in both the 100 metres and 200 metres, will most likely go down as the greatest sprinter of all time. His times of 9.58s in the 100 metres and 19.19s for the 200 metres are – in the minds of many – still difficult to comprehend.

Asafa Powell, who not so long ago, was the fastest man in history setting incredible world record times -  9.77, which he equalled three times, and 9.74, the time that Bolt broke to become the world record holder.
Since then Powell has lowered his personal best to 9.72s and he promises to run even faster.

Bolt is 23, Powell, 27, so we can expect them to remain among the best for at least the next four years. After that Bolt is expected to continue on for perhaps another four years, by which time he is expected to cement his place as the greatest icon in the sport.

Who stands ready to replace Bolt and Powell? Both men are extremely talented but does Jamaica have more of that talent coming up ready to fill the breach when Powell decides to walk away in three or four more years as he has said he will?

The immediate answer would seem to be yes.

Yohan Blake, the former St. Jago High athlete, who for the last year has been training with Glen Mills, is only 20 years old and he has already clocked 9.93s, a time which makes him the third fastest Jamaican ever. We can assume that Blake will go even faster in the coming years. His training partner, Bolt, has spoken publicly about his hard Blake works and once he manages to overcome to stage fright, will become a legitimate contender to becoming one of the fastest men of all time.
We await with some eagerness, the 2010 season and the World Championships in Daegu, South Korea in 2011, to see if Blake can develop into a world class medal contender. He, Powell and Bolt, should also form a relay team that will go even faster than the 37.10s that was set in Beijing in 2008.
Dexter Lee, formerly of Herbert Morrison is currently training with ‘mystery’ coach Anthony Carpenter in Atlanta, Georgia alongside countrywoman Veronica Campbell Brown, the two-time Olympic 200 metre champion. Lee, a world junior champion, promises much, so we will see what he produces on the track come next season. Perhaps we might get a glimpse of what is to come. Will he be a revelation or a bust? That is the question that awaits an answer.

Similarly, Nickel Ashmeade, who has been inconsistent having braved injury and adversity in recent times.
He trains with Campbell Brown’s former coach Lance Brauman in Florida, alongside his former high school rival, the talented Ramone Mckenzie.  Ashmeade has shown great promise as a junior but there are still too many unknowns where he is concerned. I eagerly await 2010/2011 to see what he produces.

Jazeel Murphy is only 14 years old but he seems to possess talent similar to those of Usain Bolt. 10.4x over the 100m without the benefit of proper fundamentals suggests that he can go much, much faster, as he continues to develop his talent.

So, on the surface, it would seem that Jamaicans are standing by to fill whatever breaches are created when our current world beaters step aside. We can only hope that they  fulfill the wonderful promise they currently have on display.

Over the last two years, Michael Frater, the 2005 World Championship 100-metre silver medallist, recently added two major gold medals as a member of the Jamaican 4×100 metre relay team. The team set a world record and won at the Olympic Games in Beijing and at the World Championships in Berlin last August. Even though they did not break a world record in Berlin, it managed the second fastest time in history.
In the individual event, Frater has always found a way to bring out his best stuff at major championships, getting to final after final and usually producing season-best times in those finals. His PR of 9.97, for example, was run in the 100 metre finals in Beijing where he almost managed to beat teammate Asafa Powell, who finished disappointing fifth in 9.95s.
However, the 100 metre landscape is becoming a lot more challenging. Usain Bolt, of course, is king, but there is a growing number of medal contenders threatening to push the dimunitive sprinter with the very big heart to the very fringes, and this is only in his own country!
In years gone by Frater was most times a certain fixture as a member of the relay team – the top four sprinters in the nation.
However, from next season onwards it gets a lot more difficult. In addition to Bolt, Asafa Powell and Nesta Carter, Frater will now have to contend with Yohan Blake, Marvin Anderson, Steve Mullings, and several others just to make it into the national team.
Last season Blake surpassed Frater on the list of this nation’s great sprinters when he clocked 9.93s in Rome. Mullings, in running 19.98s in the finals of the men’s 200metre sprint in Berlin, also showed that he ready to run below 10 seconds, a time he flirted with on several occasions last season. Lerone Clarke also dipped below 10 seconds last year and could do so again this year.
It wouldn’t be surprising if world junior champion Dexter Lee could comes out blazing too in his first season as a senior.
But Michael has never been one to shrink away from a challenge. In 2008, he told me he believes he can run as fast as 10.8x, which was why he was disappointed with his time in the finals in Beijing. There is nothing to suggest he will not get there. However, with the number of Jamaican sprinters who have emerged as elite sprinters in the last few seasons, he will have to get to 9.8x or at the very least 9.9-low,  just to be able to make the team.
We know he has the heart for the challenge, its up to him now to show he has the legs for it too.

Usain Bolt makes the news almost daily nowadays. When he is not flying off somewhere on duties related to his sponsorship obligations he is being nominated for one award or the other, or winning some other piece for his rapidly growing trophy collection.

The triple Olympic and triple  World champion was this week named the BBC’s Overseas Sports Personality of the Year. The British Broadcasting Corporation, I believe, has an entire bureau dedicated to the man many already believe is the greatest sprinter of all time and if they could have found a way to make him the British Sports Personality of the Year, they would.

Bolt was also this week nominated for Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. He is currently fourth in the voting but should he even have a shot at being the Person of the Year?

Let’s look at what Bolt has done. He ran fast, very fast. He is re-defining sprinting as the world has come to know it. He has also brought the sport of track and field virtually from the dead. His accomplishments have proven to be great public relations for a country that once used to be known for his sun, sand and sea but has come now to be considered the country with the highest murder rate in the world. Bolt has also positioned Jamaica to capitalise by developing a sports industry that could have significant benefits to Jamaica’s economy in the long term.

These are significant accomplishments but in a world hit hard by economic recession, is the feel-good story that is Usain Bolt worthy of him being named the Person of the Year?

Millions have no jobs, famine rages in some continents, while nations are rattling sabres over the use of nuclear technology. Rising seas caused by the melting of the polar ice caps threatens the existence of some islands while rising oil prices pose a more immediate threat the economies of some smaller nations. When you put all that in context, Usain Bolt has not accomplished much.

Sport is an important thread in the construct of modern civilization but given the tenuous state of the world today, making Bolt the Time Magazine Personality of the Year would be to trivialise just how much a dangerous place the world is today.