It is ironic that the old warrior’s name should be making headlines again,
because Lance Armstrong’s is one of the best, if not the very best, sports
story of the past decade. The only problem is that so many find it hard to
believe.
This is significant because in Jamaica, we have another astonishing story, and
yet again there will be those who will be reluctant to believe it: a nation
with a population smaller than that of Chicago winning six golds at the
Olympics last month.
Even better, take Usain Bolt out of the equation because he trains elsewhere,
and we have a single track club that trains on a poorly maintained grass
field and at an embarrassment of a gym that alone accounted for three golds,
three silvers and a bronze.
This club has flourished despite a chronic lack of funding and access to only
the second tier of the nation’s talent stream. Yes, Asafa Powell was a
second-rater.
So if you want to understand the extraordinary rise of the Jamaican athletes
during the Beijing Games, you have to put Bolt’s brilliance to one side and
accept the genius of this place: the MVP Track Club, the most unlikely and
efficient production line for Olympic medals in the world.
You will find it nestling beneath the Blue Mountains, up the hill out of
Kingston. But if the setting is first-class, the facilities are not. The
base is on the campus of the University of Technology, where the rental
agreement is that the UTech track team share the expertise and time of the
MVP coaching staff – meaning that Powell works out with up to 60 college
wannabes. It was hard to assess the quality of the grass track this week
because it was unmown (although athletes were still running on it), but it
clearly had weeds and small bare patches.
A rota system works for the gym, which is squeezed into two small rooms, one
of which is a converted changing-room with a claustrophobic array of weights
and pulleys, nothing remotely modern, with sponge spilling out of the mats.
“Our facilities are not exactly First World,” Paul Ricketts, the strength
coach, said sarcastically. He also asked if we could send over some
secondhand equipment from the UK.
But as Bruce James, the MVP president, said: “The fact that we had no silver
spoon makes our achievement even better.”
First, a fleeting history lesson. One clear reason for Jamaica’s success is
its near-flawless talent-spotting programme, installed under British rule in
1910: The Champs, or, in full, the Boys and Girls Championships.
This is not some tarted-up school sports day, it is the biggest annual
sporting fixture on the island, four days of racing among the best
school-children in the national stadium in front of crowds of 30,000. In the
UK, the best male athletes are normally sucked into football; here, there is
no hiding place. And that is why everyone will know who the next great
Jamaican hopes are – because they have seen them on television since the age
of 13.
Traditionally, agents for the American colleges have swarmed round The Champs,
offering sports scholarships to their favourites. However, in 1999, Stephen
Francis, a coach at one of the leading Kingston high schools, felt that
Jamaicans were not maximising their potential abroad, so he decided to try
to develop them at home.
Thus he began MVP – “maximising velocity and power” - although the
against-the-odds nature of the project was twisted further by the apparent
antipathy of the Jamaican athletics federation. “The view was that Jamaican
coaches and management could not take athletes beyond high school,” James
said. “We were told that we would not succeed.” So MVP was denied access to
the cream of The Champs and had to work instead with the likes of Powell –
he reached a Champs final only once, and false-started – and Sherone
Simpson, who also failed to win the Champs, but did claim an Olympic silver
medal in the 100 metres in Beijing.
Yet, slowly, the group grew and its success – and Powell’s 100 metres world
record, which he held between June 2005 and May 2008 – attracted more
talent, including Germaine Mason, Great Britain’s (half-Jamaican) Olympic
high jump silver medal-winner.
Today, MVP is 16 athletes strong, 13 of whom went to Beijing, eight claiming
medals, including three of the four legs on the men’s gold medal-winning and
world record-setting relay team.
And that is the problem: it is so extraordinary that it is guaranteed to
attract adverse comment. The last dynasty of such concentrated high
achievers in athletics was the one coached by Trevor Graham, the former coach of Marion Jones and Justin Gatlin, both convicted steroid users, who
in court in May was exposed as a promoter of illegal performance-enhancers
for his athletes.
Put simply, exceptional success in athletics brings increased scrutiny. How,
for instance, did MVP’s Shelly-Ann Fraser (gold in the 100 metres in Beijing
yet unheard of before this year) improve her personal best in a year by more
than half a second? And how did MVP’s Melaine Walker (gold in the 400 metres
hurdles) improve hers by 1½ seconds?
Up at the grass track at UTech, they tell you that the only secret is the
genius of Francis’s coaching. “Mr Francis is a very intelligent man,”
Ricketts said. “He believes in killing the athletes with hard training
rather than performance-enhancing drugs.”
But there is also a distinct awareness within MVP that the world is looking in
– and not just the media. The IOC targeted the Jamaican sprinters for
blood-testing when they were in Beijing. But none of them tested positive.
That has not, though, put all the doubters’ minds at rest. The World
AntiDoping Agency has been in touch with Victor Conte, the convicted doping
pharmacist turned informant, who may be aware of a supply line into the
Caribbean.
The response of Howard Aris, the president of the Jamaican athletics
federation, is that “we have no reason to fear or suspect that anything
untoward is happening”. But the doubters point to Julien Dunkley, the
sprinter, who on the eve of the Games tested positive for boldenone, the
steroid, and was withdrawn from the Jamaica Olympic team.
And last week, two other elite Jamaicans were reported to have received banned
substances in the post; they confirmed that they had received packages, one
of them insisted that it had been sent to the wrong address, but both said
that they had certainly not been used.
For those peering in at MVP, all three are now US-based. Dunkley has even
lived and trained in Raleigh, North Carolina, under the former (now
scattered) regime of Graham, the disgraced coach.
So up at the track under the Blue Mountains, they remain unfazed and
untouched. They are awaiting the return of Francis from the European season
so that they can begin the next training programme: 5am starts and the
beginning of next summer’s assault on what is achievable and what in some
quarters has been believable.
Setting the pace
MVP medal-winners in Beijing
Gold
Shelly-Ann Fraser (100 metres); Melaine Walker (400 metres hurdles); Asafa
Powell, Michael Frater, Nesta Carter (4x100 metres relay)
Silver
Sherone Simpson (100 metres); Shericka Williams (400 metres); Germaine Mason
(high jump)
Bronze
Shericka Williams (4x400 metres relay)
