Coral King

There was some­thing dif­fer­ent in the air at this year's Adi­das Grand Prix Track and Field Meet, held ear­li­er this month at Ran­dall's Is­land in New York City. An air of ma­tu­ri­ty in­di­cat­ed that West In­di­ans were be­gin­ning to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for their own des­tiny, and seized the op­por­tu­ni­ty to cel­e­brate the gold­en an­niver­sary of the achieve­ment of In­de­pen­dence of Ja­maica and T&T. The colours that dom­i­nat­ed the land­scape were red, white and black and black, green and yel­low. The dis­play of Caribbean pa­tron­age, es­pe­cial­ly by the Ja­maicans, could not be missed, giv­en that coun­try's proven sta­tus as a su­per­pow­er in the world of track and field via the feats of Us­ain Bolt, Asafa Pow­ell and Yohan Blake and their pre­de­ces­sors.

Ja­maicans, Trin­bag­o­ni­ans and oth­er West In­di­ans came to cheer their he­roes, who lined up against the best ath­letes rep­re­sent­ing the US and oth­er parts of the world. There was pan­de­mo­ni­um when Blake sprint­ed to vic­to­ry in the men's 100 me­tres dash ahead of T&T's, Ke­ston Bled­man, who came in a very close sec­ond.

Both of their times were faster than that clocked by Tyson Gay of the USA, who had ear­li­er that day won an­oth­er one of the men's 100 me­tres races. It was no dif­fer­ent when Shelly Ann Fras­er Pryce of Ja­maica tri­umphed in the women's cat­e­go­ry of that event, which in­clud­ed a world class line-up fea­tur­ing world cham­pi­ons Cameli­ta Jeter and Al­li­son Fe­lix of the US, and Kel­ly Ann Bap­tiste of T&T, a bronze medal­ist at the last world cham­pi­onships. Amid the suc­cess­es and dis­ap­point­ments on the track, it was not pos­si­ble to ne­glect the ac­tiv­i­ties on the field. In the women's shot put event, Cleopa­tra Borel of T&T showed that the Caribbean is not on­ly fa­mous for fast run­ners, but al­so for world-class field ath­letes. Borel took fourth place in an event that was won by the reign­ing world cham­pi­on from New Zealand. The Caribbean was not to be de­nied more cel­e­bra­tion when Sanya Richards-Ross, Ja­maican-born, turned US com­peti­tor won the women's 200 me­tres event.

Oth­er Caribbean ath­letes from An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Bar­ba­dos and the Nether­land An­tilles al­so show­cased their run­ning, throw­ing, jump­ing and leap­ing skills. In true Caribbean style, the oc­ca­sion was ripe for par­ty­ing and a large seg­ment of spec­ta­tors, who had as­sem­bled as ear­ly as 11 am stayed back to fete. Dance hall artiste Shag­gy start­ed off pro­ceed­ings and had pa­trons scant­i­ng, danc­ing and singing in the stands with a num­ber of his chart top­ping hits. Richie Stephens of Ja­maica in­vit­ed the faith­ful to sing along with him as he dished out a num­ber of reg­gae fla­vored gospel songs.

With­out tak­ing away from the spir­it of praise, Faye Ann Lyons, daugh­ter of high-priest of so­ca, Su­per Blue, came on im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter Spice and en­cour­aged the au­di­ence to "mash up the place." At one point, the sta­di­um was rem­i­nis­cent of a Car­ni­val fete in Port-of-Spain. With an en­tourage which in­clud­ed a dis­ci­ple bear­ing a ban­ner with his im­age em­bla­zoned on it, dance hall star, Shab­ba Ranks en­tered the are­na to make his con­tri­bu­tion to the 50th in­de­pen­dence an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tions. He showed why he is of­ten re­ferred to as the orig­i­nal "rude bwoy." His lyrics were laced with sex­u­al in­nu­en­dos and his dance move did not leave much to the imag­i­na­tion.