LEAVE BOLT AND BLAKE ALONE

Ever since Yohan Blake became world champion in Daegu, South Korea last year, people, Jamaicans especially began speculating about whether he and Usain Bolt could co-exist at the Racers Track Club. Both men are coached by sprinting guru Glen Mills.

People began to ask whether or not Bolt would be happy that Blake would be getting more attention from Mills or whether he would want more time for himself. More recently, since Blake defeated Bolt twice at the national championships at the end of June, the chatter has intensified with many asking “How is it possible for both men to exist, to thrive with the same coach’? Some people have even gone as far as to suggest that one of them needs to leave Racers. That wasn’t enough for some critics of both men being trained by Mills so they have started to suggest that competing against each other, now that Blake has a leg up on the world record holder, will eventually cause a rift in the relationship between the two.

I laugh when I hear this silly chatter that obviously come from people who have absolutely no idea that having two world class sprinters in the same club is nothing new.

Back in 1979, a young Carl Lewis joined the Santa Monica Track Club in California. The club would come to have Olympic stars like Joe DeLoach, Leroy Burrell (who between himself and Lewis broke the 100-metre world record four times), Mike Marsh, Danny Everett and others who between them won about 18 Olympic gold medals and more than a dozen world championship medals between them. Lewis alone won nine Olympic gold medals. All these athletes co-existed quite fine and achieved fantastic success. In fact, the club still holds the world record for the 4x200m relay.

Fast forward a decade or so and we find that Maurice Greene, multiple world championship gold medallist and Ato Boldon, Commonwealth Games Champion and world champion trained together for many years. They were also good friends and I believe they remain so to this day.

Contrary to the thinking about the two sprinters both men are fine and will be fine. Bolt, I know, will be hoping to exact revenge on Blake during the Olympics but he knows that Blake will not be a pushover. Bolt will know he has to run close to 9.60 or break his own world record of 9.58 to keep Blake at bay. Similarly, Blake knows what it will take to beat Bolt. He knows that he will have to be on top of his game if he is to prevent his friend and in many ways, mentor, from becoming the first man to defend his 100-metre title on the track at the Olympics.

Jamaica is fortunate to have two of the fastest men in history co-existing within the same camp and four of the five fastest men of all time. Instead of trying to rip them apart we should be doing everything possible to keep them together in the same environment that spawned their success.