KINGSTON:
On a dusty, sun-bleached grass sports field in Kingston, a crop of Jamaican schoolchildren are being put through their paces with dreams of following in the footsteps of Usain Bolt or Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce.
Lines of chalk mark out the lanes of a rudimentary running track, where a few dozen young hopefuls are racing in the kind of athletics meeting that is popular across Jamaica, the spiritual home of sprinting.
“Most of these kids want to become professionals; they all dream of becoming the next Usain Bolt or the next Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce,” track coach Shanti Blake tells AFP.
“Pretty much everybody here that does sports wants to try to become a professional, because everybody wants to become the next Usain Bolt.”
Blake looks on approvingly as this young crop of runners, some only six years old, strive to replicate the running style of the Jamaican track icons who have been regular visitors to Olympic and World Championship medal podiums over the past two decades.
“I’m dedicated to making some of these kids professionals,” said Blake, 40, whose own dreams of a sprinting career were cut short by injury. “Most definitely, I am going to.”
For Joseph Heron, whose daughters Nayeli (10) and Jaya (nine) are both competing in the meeting, the lure of a professional career is only part of the appeal. Athletics also represents a pathway to academia via the possibility of scholarships.
“(Running) keeps them healthy and and strong,” Heron says. “The track is a very powerful part of our history, not just for those who go on to become professionals, but the impact on general life. Many go on to get scholarships and influence their careers.”
Shanielle Francis, meanwhile, is further down the road in her sprinting journey. Francis works as a coach at the Tapp Track Academy, where she aims to mould young sprinters “into the athletes that you want them to become.” A second-year student of sports kinetics at the University of the West Indies, Francis is an illustration of the kind of high-quality coaching, driven by academic excellence, that can be found in Jamaica.