A young female student athlete and member of a dominant New York City high school track and field team is vacationing in Jamaica , the land of her birth. A family member with whom she’s staying arranged for her to continue her track training there, by signing her up with one of the premier track clubs in the island.
At the end of her first day of training the teen called me quite excited and almost out of breath as if she had just run a sub-60 for the 400m. After I was able to coax her to relative calmness, she exclaimed: “Coach, guess what? I have found out the secret why Jamaicans are such great sprinters!”
“Really,” I said. “That would be great, because as far as I know, that’s a question that has been perplexing many people, including some very great sports minds.” I continued to tell her that if she truly had that answer, she would also be fulfilling the scripture, when it says in part, “That which was hidden from the wise and prudent, is now revealed to the babe and suckling.”
But the young athlete hit back: “Coach I am not joking I am very serious, and guess what? I have met several gold medal winners and other athletes who have represented Jamaica . I am even training with some of them; how cool is that?”
“So get back to the secret,” I urged her.
“And Coach,” she continued without even hearing me, “that is not the only secret I found out.”
Again, I interrupted her to ask: “What are you a spy?”
“Noooooo,” she exclaimed. “But when you read about this club and the world-class athletes that run for them, and suddenly I found myself training alongside some of them, I am just in awe.”
“The other secret I learnt is one of the reasons why my high school track team is so dominant. Coach, would you believe it’s the same exact drills we do, and in the same order? The coach even asked me and one of the gold medalists to demonstrate some of the drills to the new people.”
So, what is the big secret you have discovered, I pressed?
“The reason why Jamaicans are able to run so fast is they train on grass, she finally revealed.
“That’s it?”, I asked.
“Coach,” she said, “I was shocked when I got to the training ground, and I saw lanes marked out in something that looks like tar around a football (soccer) field. I asked one of the coaches where was the track that we would be training on? To my amazement she told me ‘this is it.’” I then told her that in New York , high school athletes or even club athletes train on official tracks. Many high schools have an official track and if there is no track at the school, almost every community park has an official track where they can train,” she said.
She continued, “The Coach told me that was the big secret to Jamaica ’s dominance in the sprints; because if an athlete can run fast on grass, then he or she will run much, much faster on an official track.”
“The coach told me that every Jamaican athlete trains on grass — from Bolt, Asafa, Shelly-Ann Frazer, Bridgette Foster-Hylton right down to high school athlete. She said, take Holmwood Technical High School , for example; Holmwood won all the relays this year at the Penn Relays: the 4×1, 4×4, and the 4×8. Yet Holmwood doesn’t have an official track; those girls all train on grass, the most times they run on an official track in Jamaica, is when they run at the National Stadium, which is, maybe, three of four times a year, give or take a few meets, the coach told me,” she quipped.
Then she thought more about what she was told. “Coach,” she said, “when I went home and thought about what that Jamaican coach said to me, I think she’s is right. You see Coach, stop to think about it for a minute,” she said.
Lack of facilities
“Jamaica does not have the training facilities like official tracks, training gear and equipment like what we have at the high school level in America,” she said. “And yet they are able to compete with the best in the world and most times out-performed them. Can you imagine if they had everything just like the big countries of the world?”
I heard her out before telling her I understood exactly what she was saying.
“You are basically saying that if Jamaican athletes had more access to tracks with Mondo or similar surfaces and were able to combine their grass-track training and more practices on these kinds of official surfaces, they would be even more awesome than they are?”
“You got it Coach!” she exclaimed.
Then she continued: “Coach my experience here is so wonderful,” she said. “I definitely want to come back next year. And Coach, this coming track season, I will be running mid- to low-50s in the 400m. I promise you; that is my goal. And one last thing, can we find a grass track to train on when I get back to America .” Remember, that’s the secret”, she ended with a big laughter.
How interesting, I thought. Could this young athlete be on to something? I wonder what the rest of the world thinks about this.