Do coaching sessions make our young athletes fall in love with training or out of love with training?
Fun equals attendance. Attendance equals adherence. — Kyle Davey and Matt Tomez.
Iron sharpens iron—The clear pathway to Olympic gold.
The intensity of Jamaica’s High School Championships drives Jamaica’s track and field culture and their world-acknowledged sprint factory.
It would have been glaringly noticeable the crowd attendance at the National Senior Championships notwithstanding it’s an Olympic year and the High School Championships is stark.
The backbone of Jamaica’s Olympic medal dominance is its High School system that provides its world-class coaches such as Stephen “Franno” Francis and Glen Mills with the talent and potential to develop Olympic and World champions.
Kishane Thompson, a former student of Garvey Maceo High School acknowledged that despite not reaching the ISSA/GraceKennedy Boys’ Athletics Championships final during his school career, his passion for the sport fuelled his pursuit of becoming a professional athlete.
American sprinter Gabby Thomas says she grew up loving track as her family is a huge track family and so if “I can just run, run well and make my grandfather and my dad proud, then I’m doing my job”. Thomas credits her Jamaican roots for her speed. Her father is a Jamaican.
This is Paris 2024 Olympic month. Jamaica is the buzz and the talking point—Franno, Kishane, Shericka (Jackson), Tia (Clayton), Shelly-Ann (Fraser-Pryce), and Oblique (Seville).
A sharp contrast to the narrative surrounding Team TTO’s track and field Olympic hopes. I am not one for having a negative or pessimistic outlook.
Where there is a will, there is a way but having the will without accountability and the deliberate intention to learn from failures and mistakes will not engender change.
Olympic medal favourites speak about their joy and love for their sport, their hard work, listening to their coaches and the support of their families. And their goal of going for gold.
American athlete Noah Lyle may rub people the wrong way with his self-confidence. He has made it clear that he not only wants to win Olympic gold in Paris but to break Usain Bolt’s world record.
While some may not be as vocal and in your face as Lyle, that’s what champions do: “Dream Big”, “Fail Big”.
You can’t achieve greatness by thinking small and mediocre. You have to have Olympic gold medal energy and mindset.
Over the weekend at the NAAATT Senior and Junior Track and Field Championships there was a noticeable lack of that Olympic gold medal energy and mindset.
There are different opinions with respect to why. But from my perspective, I don’t delve into finger-pointing and blame, I am always focused on what’s the solution.
You can’t have a journey without a destination.
Without the declared destination of going for Olympic gold, we (Trinidad and Tobago) will continue looking on with envy at Jamaica and pondering what they doing that we not doing.
In life, you get what you focus on and think about. Hasely Crawford is the first Caribbean athlete to win a 100m Olympic gold medal. Keshorn Walcott—the first Caribbean athlete to win an Olympic javelin gold medal.
Team TTO takes inspiration from the achievements of Hasely Crawford, Keshorn Walcott and the 2008 (recognised in 2022) 4x100 metres gold-medal winning relay team—Aaron Armstrong, Keston Bledman, Marc Burns, Emmanuel Callender and Richard Thompson.
We have Olympic gold in our DNA. We going for gold. Speak it. Plan for it. Believe it. The future is as bright as we believe it to be.
Remember without a vision the people shall perish.
Fortune favours the brave. We going for Gold! Paris here we come!