Jamaica and the rest of the region are still reeling from the shocking disclosures that five Jamaican athletes, starting with the legendary Veronica Campbell-Brown and including their beloved Asafa Powell and 2004 4×100 Olympic gold medallist Sherone Simpson, have tested positive for banned substances. It is a crisis of very real proportions in Jamaica, where, as André Lowe of the Gleaner puts it, athletics has “not only replaced football and cricket as the island’s No 1 sport” but has also become “the main unifying force for Jamaicans.” The revelations may be “devastating” for Jamaicans but they are equally dispiriting for people across the Caribbean.
Who can forget the euphoria of 2008, when the region’s athletes, led by the phenomenal Usain Bolt, gave us one Olympic golden moment after another? We exulted then in the Caribbean dream of unity and world-beating excellence, starved as we were of such sporting dominance since the decline of the once mighty West Indies cricket team. And our athletes rewarded our faith again at London 2012, underlying our claim to being the best region in the world for athletics based on medals per capita.
The memories still have the power to warm the heart and lift the spirit. Now though, there is sniggering on the part of those who felt that their right to dominate had been usurped and the corrosive worm of doubt and disillusion is burrowing its way into our collective psyche.
It is a most unwelcome development, even as the West Indies cricket team has come up empty-handed in the recent ICC Champions Trophy in England, the tri-nations one-day competition with India and Sri Lanka and the just completed one-day series against Pakistan, the latter two played out in front of disappointing crowds.
The cricket results can be attributed to a combination of faulty batting technique, undisciplined bowling and tactical naiveté. The overall picture is, as it has been for some years now, a depressing combination of dubious selection and coaching policies, substandard captaincy, and the inconsistency and lack of focus at key moments, which remain woefully unresolved. And even if the West Indies Cricket Board, the management, coach and players do not seem to appreciate it, this all reflects poorly on Caribbean people and our capacity to shrug off the burden of our history and consistently be the world beaters we can be.
Meanwhile, on the eve of the Anniversary Games, beginning tomorrow in London, cleverly promoted to relive the glory of London 2012, the British media and public are relishing another great summer of British sport. For the British, last summer was indelibly marked by the tremendous performances of Team GB at the Olympics, bookended by the first ever victory for a Briton in the Tour de France and Andy Murray’s US Open victory (following his Olympic gold medal), which made him the first British man to win a tennis grand slam event since 1936.
This summer, the British and Irish Lions have won the rugby union Test series in Australia, Chris Froome has followed in Bradley Wiggins’ cycle tracks to win a second successive Tour de France for Britain and Andy Murray has finally brought the Wimbledon men’s singles title home, 77 years after Fred Perry won it. In addition, after an enthralling First Test at Edgbaston, which could have gone either way, England have drubbed Australia in the Second Test at Lord’s and look set to dominate the remaining Tests. Sell-out crowds have been the order of the day and the series will continue to play to full houses, such is the Ashes factor and the attractiveness of the England brand. Indubitably Britain’s summer of sporting success has lifted the national spirit immeasurably.
By contrast, we, in the Caribbean, can only contemplate doping scandals tarnishing Jamaican athletics and the continued diminishing of West Indies cricket. Many will, however, find some sort of enjoyment in the Caribbean Premier League which starts next week – some of the failures in the one-day series will no doubt star in the shortest form of the game and the crowds will fill the grounds in search of an entertainment quick-fix. But is this really what our culture and great sporting traditions have come to?
We may not all realise it but, just as these are worrying times for governance, economic development and integration in the region, these are also worrying times for sport in the Caribbean.
