The Spirit and the Flame

Aug 21, 2016 Countryman, Features / Columnists

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By Dennis Nichols
The song ‘Guyana’s Child’ sung by Jessica Xavier, and its recurrent refrain has been stuck in my mind these

past few days. I guess it’s because I’ve been wondering when one of Guyana’s children will come good at the highest levels in international sports. Like the Rio games.
Foolishly or naively, I feel that if for nothing else, proximity to our giant southern neighbour should have given us just that extra fillip needed to roll back the years and, with at least a bronze medal, repeat what Michael Parris did in 1980. Has the spirit to win deserted us for good?
Back in August 1987 I stood at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin and stared at a 51 year-old memory. Jesse Owens was on the track, and on track for four gold medals under the baffled gaze of Adolf Hitler. The spirit of the Germans was such that, under der fuehrer’s exhortation, athletes were going to prove the innate and athletic superiority of the blond, blue-eyed Aryan boys. Jesse Owens dismantled the idea.
Owens’ spirit hovered hauntingly that day despite the memory of a neo-Nazi couple who tried to intimidate me and a friend after a soccer match at that venue two weeks earlier. Not far from the arena an eternal flame flickers and flares, erratically at times, but never goes out. Its symbolism is instantly evident.
Now, twenty-nine years later, I think again of the spirit behind the sport. Nationalism has its bad and its good qualities. I read that Hitler was a proud man; Owens was said to be humble and modest, but I do not doubt that both had something to prove during the games. (By the way, Germany’s Nazi party did not want Jews or Blacks to participate, and relented only after an international boycott threat. Was the threat in fact really from the ‘inferior’ Black American athletes?) Owens, having endured entrenched racism back home, may have felt his time had come, especially after the propagandistic but hearty welcome he and other Black athletes received in Berlin.
Whatever the political nuances, Jesse Owens created history, as between August 3rd and 9th of 1936 he won four gold medals in the 100m, 200m, long jump, and 4×100 relay, a feat that took nearly half a century to be repeated when Carl Lewis did the same at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Since then however, American athletes have increasingly shared the winner’s podium and the winning spirit with athletes from the Caribbean, most notably those from Cuba, Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, The Bahamas, and more recently Grenada and St. Kitts. No Guyana!
I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there seems to be something of the essential nature of the ‘winner athlete’ missing from ours. It’s more than the opportunities, the training facilities and the coaching, though these are certainly factors which contribute to the stagnation. It’s more than government’s role in sports, financial incentives and rewards, and the patronage of the business community. It’s more than individual talent and effort.
The closest I can get to it is a belief – an unequivocal conviction that as an athlete representing your country, you are, or can become, the very best at what you do; that your country deserves and expects from you no less – and a searing desire to win, whether you actually do or not. There is still an intangible something missing that I cannot put into words, but if that mindset endures, winning is virtually guaranteed.
It seems to me that we Guyanese look at what appears to be the cavalier or laid-back attitude of some American and Caribbean athletes, and try to copycat it minus the tenacity that accompanies it. We fail to see that it stops at a certain point. That’s the moment when focus and implacable resolve set in.
We see it momentarily for example, when Bolt stops playing to the crowd, acknowledges his God, and steels his body and mind for a ten or twenty second explosion of talent, will, and brutish muscle power. Thus natural flamboyance hardly detracts from, or disguises, the unquenchable will to win that athletes like him, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, Kim Collins, Kirani James, and of late, Elaine Thompson and Shaunae Miller, possess.
The 400-metre women’s final last Monday brought this fire-in-your-belly will to win home in spectacular and controversial fashion. Allyson Felix of the United States and Shaunae Miller of The Bahamas ran their hearts and lungs out. Both wanted to win badly. Felix would have her fifth gold and become the most decorated women’s track and field athlete in American history with seven Olympic medals. Miller would become the second Bahamian woman to win that Olympic event, and the first in 12 years after Tonique Williams. In a post-race interview Miller quietly but emphatically expressed a fierce desire to win at all costs. Near to tears. Felix accepted the result, in quiet and ladylike fashion. Who wanted the win more?
Track and field success and inspiration go hand in hand. Inspiration of current athletes often comes from past stars and sports figures. The latter must be prominent and accessible in their own country or there should be public statues, busts, murals, and other pictorial representations of them, along with the relevant literature.
There may be many young prospective athletes who never heard of names like Clem Fields, Claire Harris-Thomas, Ed Hartley, George Cumberbatch, Harry Prowell, Moses Dwarka, James Wren-Gilkes, and June Griffith. Many years ago I heard that Hartley had won an international Masters competition in the hammer throw event. I can find no record of that locally; hopefully it may be because I didn’t know where to look.
Where are the prominently-displayed statues of our sports heroes, legends, and icons, including our first world champion boxer, Andrew ‘Sixhead’ Lewis, or those of Rohan Kanhai, Clive Lloyd, and Shiv Chanderpaul? Do our teenagers, particularly girls, know who Jennifer Innis, Laura Creavalle, Nicolette Fernandes, Aliann Pompey, Gwendolyn O’Neal and Sachia Vickery are? How many schoolchildren know that Cliff Anderson is more than the name of a sports hall in Georgetown? You get my drift.
The gut-glory and the fire we associate with champion athletes all over the world seem to flicker continually in Guyana, and to flare occasionally, but never strong enough to melt the iron bands of mediocrity and failure that hold back our runners, jumpers and throwers at the highest levels of international competition. Maybe we need something like the eternal flame that burns near Germany’s Olympiastadion in Berlin, to remind us of qualities like tenacity, endurance, and continuity that are hallmarks of winner athletes and winner nations.
Usain Bolt won his ninth Olympic Gold on Friday evening, and recreated history as the indomitable master of his craft, and of himself. Isn’t it remotely possible that somewhere in Guyana, maybe in Crabwood Creek, Dartmouth, Aishalton, or even in angry GT, a budding Bolt is flexing his quads, stretching his angular frame, growing strong on metemgee, dhal, and steamed greens, and thinking about 2020 or 2024? For Guyana’s sake and for national sports pride, I hope so.

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