DID ASAFA MAKE TRACK JAMAICA’S NUMBER-ONE SPORT?

Ever since he – by his own words – ‘panicked’ in the Men’s 100-metre finals at the World Athletic Championships in Osaka, Japan in 2007, former world-record holder Asafa Powell has spent much time off the track trying to tell the world that he is not a choker.

Following the disappointment of a fifth place finish at the Olympic Games in Athens in 2004 and missing the 2005 Worlds in Helsinki because of a groin injury, Powell went to Osaka favoured to win the men’s 100m finals. And as was expected he was well on the way to doing just that and claiming his first individual gold medal at a major global championships when he crumbled under pressure applied by American Tyson Gay and finished third. Bahamian sprinter Derek Atkins won the silver medal that day. Atkins, who in 2007 had been telling the world he was Powell’s cousin, spent the next year leading up to the Olympic Games mocking the powerfully built Jamaican. Sure enough, Powell finished fifth in Beijing and then won another bronze in Berlin in 2009. Those two bronze medals are the only two individual global medals to Powell’s name and they have come to define the career of a sprinter who has gone under 10-seconds a record 66 times.

It is that legacy that Powell has spent much of his time defending and what prompted him during a recent interview with a British newspaper to say that his legacy is secure as one of the greatest sprinters of all time, one who made track and field the number one sport in Jamaica and it was he who brought so many fans to or back to the sport. But did Powell, like he did in 2007,  put his foot in his mouth yet again?

‘Before me, track and field was not the No 1 sport in Jamaica, football was,’ he said. ‘Sure, we had Don Quarrie in the Seventies, but that was about it.

‘Then I came along to take the Commonwealth gold and, more importantly, become the first Jamaican to break the world record. That’s when other athletes rose up, with the men’s relay and with the women sprinters.

When I was a child growing up in Trelawny and Manchester I had very little exposure to football. I saw my first football match on television somewhere about 1972 – Liverpool vs Stoke I think it was – but it was track that captured my imagination. At primary school, during recess and lunch my friends and I would adopt the names of many of the world’s great sprinters and line up and race. There was special pressure on anyone who chose the name Quarrie because if you did you were expected to win. Years later Ernie Smith sang Duppy or Gunman that immortalised Quarrie as the fastest ever Jamaican. In high school, we played book racing and lined up Quarrie alongside such sprinters as Steve Williams, Houston McTair, Silvio Leonard, Alan Wells, Valry Borzov, and others as we waited for ‘prep’ to come to a conclusion each evening after school.

By then, however, we were further exposed to the world of football and we often spoke about legends like Alan ‘Skill’ Cole and revered schoolboy stars like Lenny Hyde and Sweetie Smith. It was then that it became clear to me that football was the major sport in Jamaica. Clubs like Santos, Cavaliers, and Boys Town were always mythical and seemingly dominated the sports news on radio back then.

Jump forward 20-something years to 1998. The Reggae Boyz become the first team from the English-speaking Caribbean to qualify for the World Cup in France and the national fervor was unprecedented. For a few years following the World Cup the name Reggae Boyz was on the lips of people across the world but following two subsequent failed World Cup campaigns Jamaica’s football has fallen several pegs on the popularity scale. Still the Premier League continues to be to the most popular organized sporting activity in the country, attracting hundreds of millions of Jamaican dollars in sponsorship and hundreds of thousands of fans watch matches each week live or on television. During this time, Jamaica through the exploits of Veronica Campbell Brown, Shelly Ann Fraser, Sherone Simpson, Melaine Walker, Brigette Foster Hylton and of course, the world’s most marketable athlete, Usain Bolt, have brought in many more fans to the sport locally and at the international level.

Since Campbell Brown’s exploits in Athens in 2004 when she won two gold medals, interest in track and field has grown steadily but most people will tell you that it was after Bolt destroyed the world’s best sprinters in 2008 that track and field’s popularity exploded. Senior meets at the national stadium that used to attract a few hundred people, now attracts thousands and the Jamaica International has for the past two years hosted crowds of near 25,000.

During this time international football matches have struggled to attract crowds of even 10,000. This is in part because of the failure of the administration to capitalize on the novelty that the team brought back in 1998 and the fact that in reality Jamaica doesn’t currently have a charismatic ‘star’ baller. So perhaps, track and field has surpassed football in terms of popularity, even though I am still reluctant to make that call.

But would it be fair to say Powell was the sole cause of this? The answer would be a resounding NO! There has always been a love affair with Asafa. Yes, he was the first to constantly beat the Americans but as time passed the expectations of him winning a major individual medal have dwindled significantly. Bolt is now the man. He wins and wins in style. Not only has he won the sprint double at the last two major championships he has also set world records each time. This has captured the imagination of the country and the world.

Campbell Brown, Fraser Pryce and upcoming stars like Yohan Blake have played very significant roles in raising track’s profile in Jamaica. In the meantime, Powell has been losing popularity. So, I am afraid that Powell has once again made a misstep. Sure, we agree that he has helped raise his sport’s profile in Jamaica but was he solely responsible? No, because that would be like saying Powell is favored to win the gold in Daegu later this summer. Not only would it be inaccurate, it would be downright delusional.