So how did a yam-eating, nugget-munching group of carefree kids from Jamaica's mean streets conquer the world? “There is no magic potion,” Germaine Mason said before hinting that being sick at dawn, on crutches for six months and a victim of gang violence might have helped.

Mason, who first visited Britain in 2001, won the silver medal for his adopted homeland in the high jump in Beijing. Draped in a Union Jack, he was hugged by Usain Bolt, while back in Kingston, his grandfather was fêted as a king by neighbours. UK Athletics (UKA) claimed a telling hand in Mason's success, but the truth is that Mason owes most to Stephen Francis, one of Jamaica's pre-eminent coaches, and he was shorn of his lottery funding last year. Mason spends half the year in Kingston and, while Fuzz Ahmed has polished him in London, his is a Jamaican story.

It is a remarkable one that was lost in the rush to deify Bolt and crucify Dave Collins, the deposed UKA performance director. “I grew up in a middle-class part of Kingston, but you are still exposed to the violence,” Mason, 25, said. “I was a teenager when a friend was robbed and killed. Another good friend got into a fight and accidentally killed a guy. He went to jail and I write him letters. When I went to the world juniors in 2000, I realised I wanted to be part of that and I stopped hanging out with the gangs.”

With his parents separated, Mason was brought up by his grandmother and joined Francis's now fabled MVP club in Kingston. He won a bronze medal at the World Indoor Championships in 2004, became close friends with Asafa Powell, the former

100metres world record-holder, and the future seemed bright. Then he ruptured his patella tendon, fell out with Francis and was forced to pay close to $20,000 (about £11,400) for a career-saving operation in Miami. “Stephen Francis was not giving me the attention I needed because Asafa had just broken the record,” Mason said. “I looked on the internet and found out 90 per cent of people never come back from this injury. Some can't even walk right. I could not walk for months, but had the surgery and started training with Sue Humphrey in Texas.”

It was the break with Francis that convinced him to compete for Great Britain. His father is from Tottenham, his Jamaican mother lives in Acton and his brother holds the Ealing schools 100metres record. Humphrey sent him his training schedules, but injuries dogged him and you sense he is being diplomatic about his treatment by UKA. Having returned to Francis, he said: “I had a real bad injury, my hamstring and lower back, and they [UKA] said I should stay in Britain. I said I would not make that decision in Olympic year. I was willing to sacrifice the money to go to Jamaica. I'm not bitter they cut me. I was grateful to have had the lottery money in the first place.”

UKA wants to use Jamaican coaches such as Francis and Glen Mills, Bolt's guru, and Mason is their spy in the camp. “Stephen is like a dictator. I do the same conditioning as the sprinters and I've been throwing up while he's there saying, 'Get up!' He pushes us to the limit and beyond. People may be suspicious of Jamaica, but Stephen told us there are two ways, 'You can do it through hard work and beat the athletes on drugs or you can take the drugs.' Stephen does not give his athletes drugs and Jamaicans believe in hard work.”

So much so that Mason and Powell make use of substandard facilities from 5am. “I'm not used to fancy equipment, but it does not matter because it comes down to the coach,” he said. Why that coach cannot get the best out of Powell, athletics's most celebrated choker, is a mystery. Mason said: “The pressure gets to him. He's 25 and sprinters' careers do not last long. Usain Bolt is the new sprint king and if he [Powell] wants the title back, he needs to work on whatever mental block he has.”

Bolt, Mason says, is the “Muhammad Ali of Jamaica” and, in answer to criticism from Jacques Rogge, the IOC president, of Bolt's celebrations of his 100metres win, Mason told how the sprint champion satisfied everyone who wanted a photograph with him in the Olympic Village. “I was disappointed with Rogge,” Mason said. “Athletics has a dark cloud over it and Usain is helping get rid of it. Jamaican culture is about being relaxed, working hard and having fun. Footballers score goals and do back-flips, he danced. You don't break the world record every day.”

Some in Jamaica are unhappy about Mason's change of allegiance and he will return from this weekend's World Athletics Final in Stuttgart to spend time with his extended family in London. “Some say I'm a sell-out, but I've been competing for Britain since 2006 and the only time they said that is when I won the medal,” he said. “I'm not letting them dictate what I do. They don't know the hardship I've been through.”