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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Should Usain Bolt join the delegation to Singapore to promote the Youth Olympics and help his country get the money needed to acquire new synthetic tracks for the National Stadium and Stadium East?

There has been much debate about that issue this week. Minister Olivia Grange claims she had requested of Bolt’s management team, his presence on a mission to the Signapore to get much needed help for this country’s shoddy facilities. Bolt’s management team has said they don’t think it will be possible, given that he has prior commitments.

That is where the story should have ended.

Usain Bolt has been the beneficiary of much love, honour and attention from the lawmakers of this country, but in the last two years, especially, he has paid them back 10-fold, if not more.

Puma, Bolt’s shoe sponsor, said earlier this year the super athlete’s media market value to the company is in excess of US$350 million dollars. That is money Puma would have had to spend if they were to promote their products using traditional advertising.

I doubt very much if Jamaica has spent that amount of money in 10 years marketing this country but I am certain that should Bolt’s media market value to Jamaica be calculated it would amount to much more than what it would cost Puma. Through Bolt and his exploits, the Jamaican flag has been raised six times at the last two major championships but it extends way beyond that. Askmen.com recently conducted a poll – non-scientific, yes, but more than half-a-million people from across the world responded to the poll that named Bolt as the second most influential man in the world. Where is he from? Jamaica. Not Puma; Jamaica.

Everywhere he goes, the first thing that comes to people’s minds is “That’s Usain Bolt. He is from Jamaica.”

If Bolt should never lift another finger or wear Jamaica’s colours again we could never pay him back for the positive imaging he has helped this country with. Let me remind you. Over the past few years, Jamaica’s international image has taken a beating, justifiably so because of our ridiculous murder rate and our fragile economy.

Bolt has helped in terms of damage control by projecting some of the things that are still great about this country.

So if he chooses not to go on a seven-day mission to Singapore we should just let it go. The man has other commitments that are critical to building his brand and ensuring his future so that when his career is over he does not have to worry about taking care of his family and himself. He has to because Jamaica certainly isn’t going to. For all the goodwill he would have earned Jamaica, should be break his leg tomorrow and his career ends, this country would forget about him in the time it took for him to set the world record in Berlin.

Bolt has given Jamaica leverage, something that it can use in future negotiations as it hopes to create a proper sports industry that will earn valuable millions of dollars for this ailing economy.

Leave Bolt alone. He will help when he can. I am sure of it, but when he is not able to, we should be thankful that we can turn to him when we really need to.
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Word came last week that Veronica Campbell Brown and her long-time coach Lance Brauman were going their separate ways bringing to an end a partnership that has yielded three Olympic gold medals, two of them individual and a World title.

The Jamaican sprint queen and her coach have been together since their days at Barton Community College, through their times at the University of Arkansas and onto the professional circuit. They have been together through thick and thin, all the while remaining loyal.

When Brauman was sentenced to 12 months and a day in prison back in October 2006 on charges of embezzlement from student assistance program funds, one count of theft from a program receiving federal funds and three counts of mail fraud, it meant that Campbell Brown as well as Tyson Gay would go into the 11th IAAF World Athletic Championships in Osaka, Japan without Brauman’s direct input into their training routines. He wrote them manuals outlining their training programmes. Campbell Brown won gold in the women’s 100 metres while Gay won gold medals in the 100 metres, 200 metres, and the 4 x100-metre relay. It would be understated to say that the union resulted in great success.

But, if there was so much success to be had why did Campbell Brown leave?

Surely she has not forgotten the abundance of success that Brauman has helped her achieve including the fastest time in 10 years – 21.74s – that she ran while defending her Olympic 200-metre title in Beijing in 20008.

Here is why I think VCB has decided to move on. VCB is a fierce competitor. She ruled the world of female sprinting in 2007 but a year later she was only fourth best in her own country. Imagine how she must have felt when as defending world champion she was unable to represent Jamaica at the Olympics in the 100 metres. The three women who beat her also showed that it was no fluke taking all three medals in Beijing.

As defending world 100 metre champion VCB earned an automatic berth in the event for Berlin so she did not have to qualify. It made no difference. A persistent toe injury and a hamstring strain two weeks or so before the world championships rendered VCB little more than a spectator in the women’s 100 metres and she was handily beaten in her pet event, the 200 metres, by her American rival Alyson Felix.

But even if she was healthy going into the world championships, in all likelihood VCB would have been beaten in Berlin. The times recorded by Shelly Ann Fraser and Kerron Stewart 10.73s and 10.75s respectively, far exceed VCB’s best times over the short sprint. She has even lamented that the world record time set by the late Florence Griffith Joyner 10.49s is out of her reach. Fraser, Stewart and Carmelita Jeter have all shown VCB that it is very possible for other women to approach the time set under controversial circumstances at the American national trials 21 years ago.

It’s a simple case of what have you done for me lately. It would seem as if the former Vere Tech alum has lost faith in the ability of her coach to give her the attention necessary to get her to run faster than she ever has before. In the world of track and field VCB is a queen. Not being on top is not something she will find acceptable. She has to be able to compete and that means extra attention from her coach, who also has another major star in Tyson Gay to attend to.

It could also be that VCB believes that Brauman is incapable of getting more out of her. Familiarity, they say, breeds contempt and it happens in all sports. No matter how good a coach is, there comes a time when his athletes stop listening. When that happens it’s time to move on.

Anthony Carpenter is the man on the hot seat now. Let’s see how far he can take VCB.

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Olympic 100 metre silver medallist Sherone Simpson must have had a hard time sitting around watching Jamaica dominate the 12th IAAF World Athletic Championships in Berlin last August. Thirteen medals including six gold ones and she did not have any part to play in a single one.

One of the fastest women in history, Simpson won her first individual medal at a major championship when she and team-mates Kerron Stewart and Shelly Ann Fraser copped a historic 1-2-2 sweep of the 100 metre sprint at the Olympics in Beijing, China in 2008. She then underwent her second knee surgery following those historic games and missed a sizeable chunk of the ‘09 season rehabilitating and training.

But it wasn’t like she didn’t try to get involved. In an incredibly brave attempt to qualify for the Jamaican team to Berlin, Germany, she barely missed the finals finishing fifth in the semi-finals of the 100 metres at the National Championships in June. It would mean that she missed her shot at making the top 4 in the finals and with it the last two world championships – Osaka and Berlin – both because of knee surgery.

In the time between Osaka and Berlin, Simpson graduated from the University of Technology fulfilling a significant part of her career goals.

Now chasing some of her other major career goals Simpson fought her way back to race fitness by participating in a series of low-key meets and one major meet before returning home presumably healthy and eager to see the back of 2009 and welcome 2010.

I have always admired Simpson for her courage, her smarts, and her ability to overcome adversity.

After experiencing a season on top of the world in 2006 when she recorded seven of the 10 fastest times in the world in the 100 metres and came within one-win of qualifying for a share of the Golden League million-dollar jackpot, Simpson would spend 2007 recovering from surgery to repair her damaged knee.

Then like the eternally rising Phoenix she exploded back onto the scene in 2008, finishing third at the National Championships in a smart 10.87s and then sharing silver medals with Stewart in the Olympic finals. Her time of 10.98s does not tell the story that she was actually leading the finals before Fraser caught and passed her on the way to the gold medal.

We can only hope that 2010 will witness another rising from Simpson. We can pray that she chooses to defend her 2006 Commonwealth Games 200-metre title in India and then go on to greater things in Daegu, South Korea in 2011. She still has time on her side and if anyone deserves a shot at World Championship glory it would the little petite miss from central Manchester.
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There was a significant debate recently over whether Usain Bolt deserved the national honour, Order of Jamaica that has been bestowed upon him by Prime Minister Bruce Golding. Many believed that it was too early for the 23-year-old World and Olympic champion to be receive the nation’s fourth highest honour.

Personally, I think Bolt deserves any and everything but he also needs to learn and learn fast that with such honour comes great responsibility. The recent brouhaha wherein Bolt made some disparaging remarks against supporters of Movado is an example of how quickly he needs to grow up.

Bolt is a supporter of entertainer Vybz Kartel, a man who veteran entertainer Bounty Killer described recently as the worst thing ever to happen to dancehall. (I guess there is no accounting for musical taste.) Based on Bolt’s comments, supporters of Movado have reportedly threatened Bolt and his management team is ‘leaving nothing to chance’, so they are taking extra precaution to ensure that Bolt remains safe.

This is my argument. Bolt is young but he is not a fool. He must be aware of the ongoing conflict between the two entertainers’ camps. He should also aware that there have been clashes between supporters of the opposing camps. His statements were inflammatory and in the context of the ongoing violence, naïve.

Usain Bolt could be forgiven for making such statements in public but Usain Bolt O.J. should have known better. His management admits that the champion sprinter is still a work in progress; that is he still a bit rough around the edges, but if Bolt is learning on the fly, this was one lesson he should have already learnt. Remember the comments he made about rolling ganja spliffs as a child? Or, the press conference where he was clowning around behind the moderator? Those incidents should have prepared him enough for him to see that there are certain things he should not do.

Surely he must be aware that there are some people who are not so bright and will do him harm just to get their 15 minutes of fame. If he has not yet learnt that lesson then he needs to learn it even more quickly than he would normally be required to. If he doesn’t it could cost him the rest of his career and neither his parents nor Jamaica and those who adore him would like that one bit. Neither would he.

How fast can Yohan Blake go next year? Blake, the promising St. Jago past student had promised so much as a junior but didn’t deliver as much as his scores of adoring fans expected. In his final years at St. Jago, Blake was upstaged by schoolmate Nickel Ashmeade, another promising junior, and Calabar’s Ramone McKenzie causing many to start thinking that they were seeing a modern-day Daniel England.

England as you may recall was a talented high school 200 metre and 400 metre runner for Calabar High School during the late 80s to early 90s. Many will remember his epic battle at Champs in the 200 metres with Asafa Powell’s older brother Donovan Powell, who that day handed England one of his rare defeats. However, as talented as England seemed to be at the time, his career fizzled after he left high school and eventually faded from public consciousness.

In 2008, Blake dropped out of school, opting to take his chances with veteran sprint coach Glen Mills. Four years earlier Mills had taken another talented youngster and eventually transformed him into one of the greatest athletes of all time. You may have heard of him. His name is Usain Bolt.

After less than one calendar year, Mills has taken Blake from 10.11s to 9.93s in the 100 metres and had it not been for a positive test for a mild stimulant that truncated his season he may have gone faster yet. Blake and training partner Marvin Anderson returned adverse findings during the National Championships in late June for 4-Methyl-2-hexanamine, a stimulant derived from the geranium plant and which will be added to the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) list of prohibited substances for 2010.

Blake has got a lot stronger under Mills’ guidance and he will get stronger still. His mechanics are also not as sound as they should be. The first 30 metres of his race, including his start, needs a lot of work but nothing that he wont be able to iron out during this current off season as he waits out his three-month ban.

There are other elements of his race that need improvement as well. When all is said and done we could be seeing 9.8xs from Blake on a consistent basis starting next season going forward.

How fast will he be able to go? I don’t know but Blake has been battle tested and the doping scandal he found himself in the middle of has forced him to mature a lot faster than he would have wanted this past season. The new found maturity and the team he has around him will help ensure that he remains focussed and train even harder.

Doubts will have been cast about his performances, so he will need to run even faster than ever to dispel those doubts over whether Muscle Speed aided his ability to run fast. In truth, he will never be able to outrun the doubters, not now, not ever. That being said, look for Blake to break new speed barriers next season as he tries to do the impossible and outrun public perception.
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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.