By Alissa Trotz
Early yesterday morning, while shopping at Caribbean Corner, the Jamaican owned grocery store in Toronto’s Kensington market (one of the oldest shops of its kind in the downtown core), my partner posed the question, to no-one in particular: Is anyone watching the Olympics today? There was a burst of laughter, from the store owner and workers, as well as from all of the Caribbean customers, as if to say “Yuh gun ask duh?” Faces glowed with excitement. No-one had to explain, and the anticipation connected us all. Everyone was trying to get out of there, to get to a television in time to see the 100m men’s final.
What a lineup! The Caribbean took six of the eight spots, massively represented by Jamaica (3 contenders), Trinidad and the Netherlands Antilles. And when Usain Bolt (aptly named Lightning), well, chugged his way across the finish line really, relaxing 80 metres into the race to look around and pump his arms in victory while still managing to shatter the world record at 9.69, with Trinidad’s Richard Thompson coming in second, one could only imagine what was going on in the streets of Jamaica, where Bolt continues to live, and in his home parish of Trelawny. Bolt (the first to bring Olympic gold home for his country in this event) continues the tradition of a long line of Jamaican and other Caribbean athletes at home and in the diaspora who have excelled at the men’s 100m – Don Quarrie, Hasely Crawford, Ben Johnson, Linford Christie, Ato Bolden, Asafa Powell. The television commentators were all wondering why Bolt ‘stopped running’ when he could have clocked an even faster time, a somewhat irrelevant speculation that showed how different priorities can be. Bob Marley says, ‘Don’t gain the world and lose your soul, wisdom is better than silver or gold.’ And so far it seems Bolt is listening. As he pointed out in a short interview, he was partly inspired by American Mike Phelps who has since taken home eight gold medals, has a long way to go, prefers to break a record small than try to smash it big, and he’s just as satisfied as he could be with his win. He – and all of us with him – were just going to live in and enjoy the moment, and not try to take anything away from that.
As if Saturday wasn’t enough, Sunday morning presented another opportunity for the Caribbean to excel. Four Caribbean runners in the women’s 100m final, representing the Bahamas and Jamaica, with the latter country (which has also given us Merlene Ottey) producing the three fastest times in the second round of heats. And when the race was over, another Jamaican, Shelly-Ann Fraser, had run her way into the history books equaling the fastest time this year of 10.78. At the time of writing this column, the second and third spots (Kerron Stewart and Sherone Simpson) were too close to call and so it looks as if Jamaica takes home not just gold, but two silver medals. And we still have the 100m relays to look forward to, as well as Usain Bolt and Veronica Campbell-Brown in the 200m finals later this week. It is not just Jamaica, but all of the Caribbean, wherever we are, who are celebrating.
The North American news coverage was most interesting. After using words like unbelievable, phenomenal and amazing, some reporters got down to wondering how a small region like the Caribbean, let alone a small island like Jamaica with just under 3 million people, could produce such world-class sprinters. Not surprisingly perhaps, it did not take long for genetic arguments to surface, one Canadian report quoting a preliminary study that allegedly found that 70% of 200 Jamaicans tested had some sort of leg protein that enhanced their running, compared with 30% of Australians. Going straight to these kinds of arguments is a bad faith and racist approach that tells us more about the commentators and stations they represent than it does about the athletes they are supposedly admiring. We are right back at racial science disguised as objective analysis, or what Honor Ford-Smith, a Jamaican friend of mine, referred to as fascist social biology. As she pointed out, if Bolt, Powell and Fraser were brain surgeons, we wouldn’t hear discussions about Jamaican DNA. I wonder what the commentators, given their obsession with finding some genetic or natural explanation, would make of the fact that the Caribbean has produced four Nobel Laureates: John Perse; Arthur Lewis; Derek Walcott; and V.S. Naipaul. Jamaican-Canadian sprinter Donovan Bailey (one of Usain Bolt’s mentors) astutely remarked that what we should be looking at instead is the importance of track and field in Jamaican culture and among its young people, starting from kindergarten. We might ask about whether Jamaica invests more in its coaches and its athletes, not by building expensive stadia like in Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana, but from the ground up. One of the best and most loving explanations of Bolt’s win came from his father, reported in Sunday’s Jamaica Gleaner as saying “Is the Trelawny yam stand up in him, yes, di yam. Once he gets going, I know they were not gonna catch him. He is such a strong young man.” After I stopped laughing at the sheer audacity of the comment, I thought, this is so true. It’s about recognizing where Bolt comes from, the community that sustains and supports his efforts, and that he remains utterly connected to. Portia Simpson-Miller, Leader of Jamaica’s opposition noted that “Their success shall stand for all times as tangible proof that our investment in the creative talents of our youth is the cornerstone for national development.” We should read this as a statement not of fact but perhaps as warning: we do not invest in our future generations, in the Caribbean.
The fact that they are leaving the region in droves is evidence of their marginalization. Clearly Jamaica must be doing something to nurture its athletes, but this is also the same Jamaica where it was estimated just a week ago that the government’s annual allocation to schools for each child enrolled was just $8,000 Jamaican dollars last year (about 114 US dollars). Surely this is not the investment the Honorable Simpson-Miller was referring to?? The 100m winners this weekend, Usain Bolt and Shelly-Ann Fraser – both just 21 years old – remind us of what we continue to do despite the signal failures of those who call themselves our leaders, and of our promise, a promise that we should take and cultivate most seriously.
In a stark reminder of the inequalities of this world we live in – which makes the Jamaican/Caribbean victories this weekend all the sweeter and had the North American networks scrambling for explanations – all of the major news networks from the USA, Canada and the UK had a bird’s eye view of events, the premium vantage points to record these historic races. Jamaican media personnel were relegated to a little trailer outside the stadium, where they had to watch the races on small screens. But the best part of Saturday morning for me was when Canadian television showed footage of the Jamaican reporters, in that trailer on the margins of the action inside, calling the race, saying oh my goodness, oh my goodness over and over again, hands in the air, mouths open, just looking proud and stunned at the same time. David Rudder, my favourite calypsonian who I love to quote, in his anthem to Caribbean cricket and his call to us to rally around the region, says it best. Small keys can open up mighty doors. Indeed.
