No Guyanese athletic triumph, but plenty to celebrate in IAAF 2015

Sep 06, 2015 Countryman, Features / Columnists

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By Dennis Nichols

Over the past two weeks I was part-Jamaican, exulting inthe feats of Mr. Bolt, Mrs. Fraser-Pryce, and their island’s12-medal harvest at IAAF World Championships 2015. Our Caricom sister was second on the medals table, but top of the heap with the overall highest percentage of gold in individual tallies, 58%, among the top three. Oh, I was also part-Kenyan and part-Cuban.

But I am a Guyanese, and had looked for our two athletes. They were lost in the heats. Not many people pay attention to 5^th and 8^th place finishersin the preliminaries, although Winston George’s 45.25 in the 400m was a national record. So I got to thinking as to why our country has never produced a top, world-class track and field ‘golden’ athlete at the Big Two – the Olympics and the World Championships. Many have come close, but as my oft-cynical father would say, ‘A miss is as good as a mile’.

Then I ‘boxed’ my brain and tried to remember how many Guyanese had

actually medaled (any kind) at either competition. I remembered Michael Parris’s Bronze in the 1980 Olympics, but surely there must have been others. I could find none. In this respect, we’ve been outmatched in the region by Jamaica, Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, The Bahamas, Puerto Rico, The Dominican Republic, Grenada and St. Kitts/Nevis.

On a hunch I also went to my computer and googled ‘Famous Caribbean/West Indian Athletes, feeling for sure that I’d find some prominent, world-class Guyanese athletes there, at least in Distance-running, Boxing, Cycling, and maybe Squash. Again, I found none. Well, I thought, Guyana isn’t actually in the Caribbean, so I googled ‘Famous South American Athletes; not a single Guyanese. Altogether I observed that the sites mentioned over a hundred athletes from the region but there was no Guyanese among them. I became dispirited and stopped looking.

There are some rather watered-down pieces on a few of our cricketers and track athletes but nothing to shout about. Shouldn’t there be more – great, heart-warming, expansive stories written by Guyanese about old timers like Robert Christiani, Clem Fields, Harry Prowell, Cliff Anderson, George Cumberbatch, Claire Harris, James Wren Gilkes, Neville Hunte, and more recently Andrew Lewis, Shiv Chanderpaul and Nicolette Fernandes?

Local sports pundits and gurus have proffered over the years several reasons and theories why Guyana lags so far behind on the world stage in athletic distinction. Most of them blame negative political influence, and poor administration from the past Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport and the National Sports Commission. And of course there is the perception that if it’s not cricket, it’s not a priority.

Many have complained ad nauseam about the lack of proper training facilities, including state-of-the-art technology, equipment, and professional training. Sure, but I feel it goes further than that – into our very psyche, national and individual, and how to embrace being champions who can generate and express true pride in being Guyanese in whatever discipline we excel at, like Jamaica.

Of course the material considerations are valid. A few years ago Clive Lloyd suggested an international track and field stadium/velodrome, an Olympic training centre, the restoration of grounds and playfields nationwide, and the development of a rigorous training programme supported by local and international commercial entities like Banks DIH, DDL, Adidas, Nike and Coca Cola. We now have the Leonora synthetic athletic track and the national aquatic centre at Liliendaal, but how many reasonably good all-weather grounds do we have for serious practice? And are we ready, and forceful enough, to woo Adidas, Nike, and Coca Cola?

In my opinion we need a special breed of people, here in Guyana, and abroad, who canvigorously promote and sell our country’s athletic potential, and at the same time imbue our budding athletes with the non-arrogant confidence and courage needed to stand and ‘run’ as equals besides the best of other countries. Talent, it is said, is never enough. Great facilities aren’t enough. For all athletes, discipline and perseverance, exercise and diet are vitally important. That is where I think our greatest efforts should be directed.

A case in point – have you ever heard of Bekoji? If you haven’t, there’s a lesson waiting to be learnt. Bekoji is a poor village (becoming a small town) in the highlands of Central Ethiopia, almost 3000 metres above sea level, with a population of 20,000, consisting of mostly farmers. It may well become the most famous long-distance ‘athletic’ locale in the world. With 16 Olympic medals in the last 20 years, the village has astonishingly produced seven World and Olympic gold medal-winning runners.

For any doubting Thomases, you can check out their names; Tirunesh Dibaba and her sister Genzebe, Derartu Tulu, Fatuma Roba, Kenenisa Bekele and his brother Tariku, and Tiki Gelana. Six of them were coached by one man, Sentayehu Eshetu, who provides four overriding rules for his charges – train hard, respect each other, work as a team, and honour your homeland – simple and unambiguous.

They train on mountain slopes, goat paths, market roads, and in a natural ‘stadium’ of red dirt with a backdrop of high ridges. Leg strength and endurance are honed to near perfection in the thin, oxygen-depleted air. According to my information source, the Ethiopian magazine ‘Style and Culture’, village children work on traditional farms, run long distances to and from school, and ‘have an incredible hunger to be the best’.

Now of course Guyana is no Ethiopia and we don’t have a Bekoji. But then there’s Jamaica, not that far away and with many features similar to ours – geography, history, culture. But for all our similarity, in world athletics we are as distant as Timbuktu is from Taipei. Read about Jamaica’s training programme for young athletes, and about Champs, the island’s hugely-competitive and massively-popular high school athletics championships. Compare them to Guyana’s, and shake your head in bewilderment.

Track wise, Jamaica has bred world beaters like Arthur Wint, Herb McKenley, Don Quarrie, Merlene Ottey, Usain Bolt, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, swimmer Alia Atkinson, and dozens of other champions in their own right. Guyana’s best and closest shot was probably the distinguished but ultimately disheartened sprinter, James Wren Gilkes, who became collateral damage when Guyana boycotted the 1976 Montreal Olympics.

Maybe that supreme Olympian, Zeus, in sympathy with Gilkes, hurled a thunderbolt curse on Guyana, then later blessed Jamaica with an equally explosive lightning ‘Bolt’ – just saying, to use a modern-day phrase. It’s a good thing that as far as sports is concerned, I adopt and claim foreign athletes as our own – an ingenious defence mechanism devised on behalf of all Guyana. You’re welcome!

Like I said earlier, for the past couple of weeks I was also Kenyan and Cuban, and Ihereby admit a strong Caribbean/African bias. This however doesn’t detract from impressive wins by other nations, and I’ve come to accept, sometimes grudgingly, great things from any country’s athletes.

But this was even better for me because of the big upset wins in the woman’s Pole Vault (Yarisley Silva, Cuba) the Discus,(Dena Caballero, Cuba) the men’s Javelin (Julius Yego, Kenya) all traditionally European conquests, and Kenyan Nicholas Bett’s non-traditional 400m Hurdles victory. The additional upset victories of South Africa’s Wayde Van Niekerk, Jamaica’s Danelle Williams and The Netherland’s Dafne Schippersin their respective events were bonuses.

I enjoy the continuous shattering of the Aryan racial and athletic supremacy myth advanced by Adolf Hitler, and destroyed by one James ‘Jesse’ Owens in the summer of 1936. With the ongoing achievements of African and Caribbean athletes, Der Fuhrer would not be just turning in his grave; he must be cartwheeling. A pity that’s not an Olympic event; anyway it would probably be won by an African or Caribbean athlete, maybe a Guyanese, sooner or later.

 

 

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