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.

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.

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.

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.

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.