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Melaine Walker of Jamaica sprints on her way to winning the Women's 400m Hurdles Final at the National Stadium during Day 12 of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games on August 20, 2008 in Beijing, China.
(Photo by Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images AsiaPac


Walker: Learning to love the hurdles

From the IAAF site


Beijing - The subtitle of Melaine Walker’s life story should be, ‘How I Stopped Worrying, And Learned To Love The 400 Metres Hurdles’. Because, on the frank admission of the new quarter hurdles Olympic champion, “I hated the event, I absolutely hated it. I never wanted to do it, but I was good at it.”
“I really wanted to sprint,” Walker admitted. “I was so excited by the sprint. Even Veronica (Campbell) couldn’t beat me. But my coach persuaded me. He said, please try the 400 hurdles, and you can go on and do the four by one (relay) afterwards. So, really, I only did it to be able to run the sprint relay.”
It was as a sprinter that she made her early mark, finishing fifth in the 200 metres final at the IAAF World Junior Championships in Annecy at the age of 15. She won silver at the same event at the IAAF World Youth Championships the next year.
But after a surprise victory over colleague, Deon Hemmings, Jamaica’s first female Olympic champion (400H, 1996), in Barbados, she was ‘persuaded’ to run the 400H in the next ‘World Juniors’ in Santiago de Chile in 2000, where she finished fifth. Yet by the time of the next world juniors, at home in Kingston, she showed her versatility by finishing fifth in the high hurdles.
The last of six children, she was born in Kingston, Jamaica on New Year’ Day, 1983, to Joseph Walker and Jennifer Wilson. “My mom said she did some running, but I don’t think it was too much. I guess I always loved running, I probably started when I was about three or four. I wasn’t good at it at first, but I just felt, ‘you should do this’.
“I was best in my kindergarten, best in High School, then best in the NC’s (US National Collegiate Championships).” Walker, now 25, is probably one of the last generation of Jamaicans, who went to college in the USA, in her case, to the University of Texas in Austin.
But she says the only thing that kept her there was the camaraderie of the track team. “After Texas, I didn’t know what to do without track. I wanted to be around my family, so I decided to go back home.” She is now part of the group trained by Stephen Francis, ie Asafa Powell, and new Olympic sprint champion, Shelly-Ann Fraser.
The turning point came after Osaka where, injured, she went out in the semi-finals. “That was a disappointment, I was hurt, but didn’t want to tell anyone. I didn’t want to feel like a punk.”
“I still hated it (400H), and asked myself, ‘why am I doing this? But then I thought, some athletes would pray to run like me, so this year I decided to do it properly. I had to love it, because I did it so well. And I started reading about the star athletes before me. And a few days before the Trials, someone asked if I could repeat what Deon Hemmings did.”
She could. And she did!

___________________________________


Big 12 Championships Spotlight: Melaine Walker (Article -Texas sports from Feburary 2005)

For Texas junior Melaine Walker, running has always come easy; maybe too easy. As a youngster in Kingston, Jamaica, Walker became a star. While at St. Jago High School, Walker set the junior national record in the 400-meter hurdles and also won that event at the Penn Relays twice. But, because she could win the events so easily, it was hard for her to understand what she needed to do in order to maximize her abilities.
“I could win the races by only giving a little bit,” said Walker. “So, I got caught up in the glory of it and I wasn’t being pushed, so I didn’t work as hard as I should have been.”
Through her talents on the track, Walker was able to meet Texas’ head coach Bev Kearney at the 1997 Penn Relays in Philadelphia, Pa. At 15, she knew she wanted to run for Texas and for that coach.
“After meeting coach Kearney, I knew that I wanted to go to Texas out of high school,” explained Walker. “It was everything to me and I really liked how the athletes performed under her.”
Before arriving at UT, Walker spent two years at Essex County College in Newark, N.J., studying and preparing with the hopes of transferring to Texas.
“When I visited Texas, I heard that 97 percent of the female student-athletes that competed and completed their eligibilty graduated with a degree," said Walker, on why Texas was so important to her. “I knew that I needed a degree for the time in my life when I am done with track. I missed out the first time around on going to Texas and I was going to make sure that I didn’t miss out the second time.”
Walker did as she had set out to do, and along the way, won five national junior college championships and earned 11 junior college All-America honors. But, she was still suffering from the same general problem as an athlete. She wasn’t being pushed.
“When I was at Essex, I worked really hard on my academics, but on the track, I still wasn’t doing the things I needed to do,” added Walker. “During practice, I would think I had done enough work and my coach would just let me stop working. I was still winning races, but I could get away with it at that level.”
But, as head coach Bev Kearney explained, there is a major difference between the junior college level and the collegiate level.
“It is such a different environment for her,” said Kearney, who has produced 44 All-Americans. “No matter how good you are in J.C., it is still a transition to this level and I think she is starting to figure out exactly what it takes to compete here.”
That transition has been a difficult process for Walker. Under Kearney’s guidance, she is learning to work, but at first, the hard work didn’t appear to be paying off. She ran at a couple of indoor meets, but didn’t win a race, which was a new experience for her. Then, at the Tyson Invitational on Feb. 12, Walker hit, what she called, the bottom.
“In my life, I never ran as slow as I did at the Arkansas meet,” said Walker. “I was frustrated with my performance and I just told myself that I had to get it together.”
So, Walker went to work. She worked harder than she ever had before. She hit the weights, got her treatments and the aggressive attitude that she ran with when she was in high school returned.
Now, the work is paying off. On the first day of the Big 12 Indoor Track and Field Championships, Walker had her best day as a Longhorn after running three personal bests in qualifying for the finals in the 60 meters, the 200 meters and the 60-meter hurdles. She ran a personal-best 7.54 in the prelims of the 60 meters and then clocked a 7.46 in the semis to advance to the final. She went on to post a personal-best 24.12 in the 200 meters and a provisional-qualifying personal-best 8.26 in the 60-meter hurdles.
“I realized that I couldn’t give a little and get a lot at this level,” explained Walker. “I was mad at myself after the Arkansas meet and I just wanted to come back and have the kind of meet I know I can have.”
“I know I’m not quite where I want to be,” added Walker, “but, I felt that feeling I used to have when I was winning races. Right now, I’m focused and confident that I can come out on Saturday and run fast, and that is what I plan to do.”
For the swift hurdler out of Jamaica, the ease of victory turned into complacence, but things have turned for the better, and the talent that earned her the accolades in high school and the All-America honors in junior college are now being put together with a work ethic that is going to make her presence known throughout the Big 12 and eventually the country

Yipsi Moreno González (born November 19, 1980 in Camagüey) is a Cuban hammer thrower. She is a double world champion and Olympic silver medalist, a former world junior record holder and current area[1] record holder. She is currently ranked first in the world.[2]

Early life and education
At the age of 11, she was recruited by the Cerro Pelado Sports School in her hometown, where she started practicing shot put and discus throw. Hammer throw was not a regular women's event at the time, but following its introduction in Cuba in 1993, she eventually concentrated on this event. Gradual improvement earned her a place on the national junior team in 1996.


Athletics career


1997-2000

In 1997, Moreno won the Pan American Junior Championships in Havana with a throw of 55.74 metres, improving the two-year-old championship record with ten metres. She beat the second place finisher Maureen Griffin by a 46 centimetre margin.[3] This year she threw past the 60 metre mark for the first time, with 61.96 m. The next year, she finished fourth at the 1998 World Junior Championships, this time 29 centimetres behind Griffin.[4] After the World Junior Championships, Moreno started working with a new coach Eladio Hernández, himself a former hammer thrower. The cooperation paid off almost immediately as Moreno established a new world junior record on 29 May 1999 with 66.34 metres at altitude in Mexico City.

Later that year, she won the silver medal at the Pan American Games with 63.03 metres, only beaten by Dawn Ellerbe who threw 65.36.[5] At the World Championships the same year her only valid throw measured 58.68 metres, giving her an eighteenth place in the final (there was no qualification round).[6] At her next major competition, the 2000 Olympics, she improved to fourth place.


2001-2002

In 2001, she broke the 70 metre barrier for the first time, and improved her personal best to 70.65 metres as she won the World Championships in Edmonton. Three weeks later she won the silver medal at the 2001 Summer Universiade behind Manuela Montebrun of France, who had finished fifth in Edmonton. In 2002 she improved to 71.47 metres in Madrid in July. She was selected to represent the Americas at the 2002 World Cup held in the same city two months later, and finished second.


2003-2005

In July 2003, she improved further to 75.14 metres. At the Pan American Games she won the gold ahead of compatriot Yunaika Crawford, smashing Dawn Ellerbe's championship record with a 74.25 metres throw.[5] At the World Championships in August she defended her title with a second round effort of 73.33 metres. Her third round result of 72.52 m further secured the gold as runner-up Olga Kuzenkova managed no more than 71.71 m.[7] Commenting on her victory, Moreno stated that she "was happy for Cuba and my family". The inaugural World Athletics Final in Szombathely, where she obtained another triumph, concluded the season. At the end of the year she was named Cuban Sportswoman of the Year for 2003.

2004 was an Olympic year and Moreno was considered the pre-event favourite for the hammer throw contest.[8] Not only was she in lead of the world ranking, her new personal best of 75.18 metres from Havana in April was the world leading result.[9] In the Olympic final, however, her chance of winiing soon dwindled as Olga Kuzenkova took the lead and Moreno fouled her first throw. Moreno went on to foul on three of her five remaining efforts, managing 73.36 metres in the fourth round, while Kuzenkova had improved to 75.02 metres in the third round.[8] Yunaika Crawford took the bronze medal behind Moreno.

The 2004 Olympic Games was the first and only major competition for Moreno in 2004. She did not compete at the World Athletics Final and experienced a foot injury which sidelined her for the first half of 2005. This meant she was dethroned from the leading position at the world ranking, but she recovered the position after a silver medal at the 2005 World Championships and a victory at the 2005 World Athletics Final. For the first time in her career, however, she went a whole season without improving her personal best.


2006-2007

In early 2006, Moreno won her first Central American and Caribbean Games title, setting another championship record with 70.22 metres. In August she again lost her top ranking position, this time to Russia's Tatyana Lysenko who had established a new world record of 77.80 m. Moreno's season best mark was 74.69 m from the Ostrava Super Grand Prix in May. She finished third at the 2006 World Athletics Final and the 2006 World Cup, both times behind Kamila Skolimowska of Poland.

On 3 March 2007, she broke her own area record as she threw 75.64 metres in Kingston, Jamaica. Establishing the new record in the fifth round of the competition, she followed this up with a 75.43 metres throw in the final round, again longer than her previous personal best. "I have had a good start this year, without physical problems", Moreno explained. On 17 June she improved the record again, with a 76.36 m throw from the second round in the Janusz Kusocinski Memorial, Warsaw.

Leevan Sands (born August 16, 1981) is a Bahamian triple jumper. He was born in Nassau.

His personal best jump is 17.50 metres, achieved in May 2002 in Odessa. This is the current Bahamian record.[1] He went to High School at Florida Air Academy He was suspended from March 2006 to September 2006 for testing positive on the prohibited substance levomethamphetamine (Vicks Inhaler )


Medal record

Men’s athletics
World Championships
Bronze 2003 Paris Triple jump
Olympic Games
Bronze 2008 Beijing Triple Jump




Achievements

2007 Pan American Games - sixth place
2005 World Athletics Final - fifth place
2005 World Championships - fourth place
2004 World Athletics Final - sixth place
2003 World Athletics Final - seventh place
2003 World Championships - bronze medal
2002 Commonwealth Games - bronze medal
2002 World Junior Championships - fifth place



(L to R) Silver medalist Phillips Idowu of Great Britain, gold medalist Nelson Evora of Portugal and bronze medalist Leevan Sands of the Bahamas stand on the podium during the Men's Triple Jump medal ceremony at the National Stadium on Day 14 of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games on August 22, 2008 in Beijing, China.
(Photo by Stu Forster/Getty Images AsiaPac)

Dayron Robles (born November 19, 1986 in Guantánamo) is a Cuban hurdler who holds the current world record in the 110 metre hurdles of 12.87 seconds, which he set on June 12, 2008 at the Golden Spike Ostrava meet, and is the current Olympic champion.

At the 2006 World Indoor Championships in Moscow he finished second with a new personal best time (indoor) of 7.46 seconds, a time which he has since improved to 7.33, making him the second-fastest ever indoors, behind Colin Jackson. At the 2008 World Indoor Championships in Valencia he didn't advance from the heats due to fact that he stopped running, thinking that fellow hurdler Liu Xiang had made a false start. This was great disappointment for Robles, who had posted 9 of the 11 fastest times of the winter season and was a favorite for winning the gold medal.[1]



At the Beijing Olympics in 2008, many anticipated a Robles/Liu showdown in the final, but Liu was forced to pull out injured in the opening heat due to tendonitis. Robles went on to comfortably win the gold medal, posting a time of 12.93 seconds in the final.



Achievements

Year Tournament Venue Result Extra

2003 World Youth Championships Sherbrooke, Canada
6th 110 m hurdles

2004 World Junior Championships Grosseto, Italy
2nd 110 m hurdles

2005 Central American and Caribbean Championships Nassau, Bahamas 2nd 110 m hurdles

2006 World Indoor Championships Moscow, Russia
2nd 60 m hurdles, 7.46 s PB

2006 Central American and Caribbean Games Cartagena, Colombia
1st 110 m hurdles, 13.12 s CR

2007 Panamerican Games Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
1st 110 m hurdles, 13.25 s

2007 World Championships in Athletics Osaka, Japan
4th 110 m hurdles, 13.15 s

2007 IAAF World Athletics Final Stuttgart, Germany
1st 110 m hurdles, 12.92 s CR

2008 2008 Golden Spike Meet Ostrava, Czech Republic
1st 110 m hurdles, 12.87 s WR

2008 2008 Olympic Games Beijing, China
1st 110 m hurdles, 12.93 s

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRF6XyzeoaE"]YouTube - Dayron Robles Breaks World Record[/ame] (not olympics)

Asafa Powell (born 23 November 1982) is a Jamaican sprinter and the son of two ministers. He held the world record in the 100 m between June 2005 and May 2008, with times of 9.77 and 9.74 seconds. He ran the anchor leg of gold medal winning, and world record setting, men's 4x100m relay at the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Career

Asafa Powell planned to be a mechanic before he took up running while studying in Kingston, Jamaica.[1][2] His elder brother Donovan was a 100 m semi-finalist in the 1999 World Championships.[3]

Powell first came to the attention of the athletics world at the 2003 World Championships when he suffered the ignominy of being 'the other athlete' disqualified for a false start in the quarter-final where Jon Drummond memorably refused to leave the track having suffered the same fate (both athletes moving less than 0.1 seconds after gun firing).

The following season, Powell did not perform to his usual standards for the 2004 Olympic 100 m in Athens, after clocking sub-10 seconds times a record-equaling nine times in a season. He placed fifth in the 100 m final, and subsequently pulled out of the 200 m final, for which he had already qualified earlier on.

The following year, he gained some consolation by breaking the 100 m world record, in Athens on June 14, 2005, setting a time of 9.77 s, beating American Tim Montgomery's 2002 record of 9.78 s (which was later annulled due to doping charges against Montgomery) by just one one-hundredth of a second. Coincidentally, Powell achieved the feat on the same track as Maurice Greene's 1999 world record of 9.79 s. Wind assistance for Powell was measured at 1.6 m/s, within the IAAF legal limit of 2.0 m/s.

Powell won the 2006 Commonwealth Games title easily after a drama-filled semi-final which saw two disqualifications, three false starts and Powell himself running into another competitor's lane while looking at the scoreboard (he was held not to have impeded the other runner).

Powell then equaled his world record time on June 11, 2006 at Gateshead International Stadium with a time of 9.77 (+1.5 m/s). August 18, 2006, Powell ran the world record time of 9.77 (+1.0 m/s) for the third time in Zürich, Switzerland. Together with Jeremy Wariner (400 m) and Sanya Richards (400 m) he won his sixth out of six IAAF Golden League events (100 m) in the same season, which earned him a total of $250,000. On November 12, 2006 he was awarded the title of 2006 Male World Athlete of the Year along with a check of $100,000.

Powell finished 3rd in the 2007 World Championship final in Osaka, Japan behind Tyson Gay, who won in a time of 9.85 seconds, and was Powell's biggest rival building up to the championships. Derrick Atkins, a reported second cousin of Powell's, came second in 9.91. Powell finished in a time of 9.96 seconds into a 0.5 m/s headwind after being passed by Gay and Atkins in the late stages of the race. Later, Powell did help to win a silver medal in the 4 × 100 m. Running the anchor leg of the Jamaican relay team, he came from fifth and nipped Great Britain at the line with a Jamaican national record of 37.89, while USA took the gold. The split time for his anchor leg was recorded at 8.84 seconds, the fastest in history.



On September 9, 2007, in the opening heats of the IAAF Rieti Grand Prix in Rieti, Italy, Powell ran a new world record time of 9.74 s (+1.7 m/s) in the 100 m, fulfilling the promise he had made earlier. He had said after his bronze medal in Osaka that he would break the record by the end of the year to make up for the disappointment of not becoming world champion.[4] Remarkably, Powell eased up in the final few meters of his record-setting race, indicating that he was saving his strength for a fast 100 m final at the same meet.[5] In the final, Powell ran 9.78 (0 m/s), bettering his semi-final time when adjusted for wind assistance.[6]

On May 31, 2008, fellow Jamaican Usain Bolt ran 9.72 seconds at the Reebok Grand Prix in New York City, taking the 100m world record from Powell after nearly three years.

Powell placed fifth in 100m final at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing with at time of 9.95 seconds, losing out on the medals again. His teammates Usain Bolt and Michael Frater also raced with Bolt winning and bettering his own world record. Frater finished sixth, recording his first sub-10 clocking, at 9.97. Seven days later, Powell had his first Olympic winning moment as he anchored the Jamaican 4x100m relay team to the Gold Medal victory, helping establish a new World Record in the process.

Powell has run 100 m in under 10 seconds 41 times,[7] a record to date bettered only by Maurice Greene, who has run under 10 seconds 52 times.[8] Powell is one of only two men to have run legally under 9.80 seconds more than once, having done so five times (Usain Bolt being the other with three sub-9.80 performances). Powell is the only man to have run legally under 10.00 seconds 12 times in a single season.


Physical characteristics

Height: 190 cm (6 ft 3 in)
Weight: 88 kg (194 lb/13 st 12 lb)

Personal bests

Distance Mark Date
60 m 6.56 s 2004
100 m 9.74 s 2007
200 m 19.90 s 2006
400 m 47.17 s 2007


Medal record

Olympic Games
Gold 2008 Beijing 4 × 100 m relay

World Championships
Bronze 2007 Osaka 100 m
Silver 2007 Osaka 4x100 m relay

Commonwealth Games
Gold 2006 Melbourne 100 m
Gold 2006 Melbourne 4x100 m relay


Achievements

60 m
Event Result City Date
10th world indoor 5th Semifinal Budapest 5 March 2004


100 m

Event Result (Pos) City Date

1st Athletic Final IAAF 7th Final Monaco 13 September 2003

2004 Olympic Games 5th Final Athens 22 August 2004
2nd Athletic Final IAAF 1st Final Monaco 18 September 2004
2006 Commonwealth Games 1st Final Melbourne 20 March 2006
4th Athletic Final IAAF 1st Final Stuttgart 9 September 2006
11th IAAF World Championships 3rd Final Osaka 26 August 2007
37th IAAF Rieti Grand Prix 1st 2nd Heat Rieti 9 September 2007
5th Athletic Final IAAF 1st Final Stuttgart 22 September 2007
2008 Olympic Games 5th Final Beijing 16 August 2008


200 m
Event Result City Date

2004 Olympic Games 4th Semifinal Athens 25 August 2004
2nd Athletic Final IAAF 1st Final Monaco 20 September 2004


4 x 100 m relay
Event Result City Date
2008 Olympic Games 1st Final Beijing 22 August 2008


Sponsorship

In January 2006, Powell signed as a global brand spokesperson for Nutrilite, the world's leading brand of vitamin, mineral and dietary supplements, based on 2006 sales. Nutrilite products are sold through Amway corporation. Powell uses Nike equipment when competing

Meet the fastest man everAgainst a backdrop of poverty and family tragedy, Asafa Powell has run the five quickest 100metres of all time. Can he redeem the ultimate event in athletics?

Alex Bilmes Observer Sport Monthly, Sunday April 6 2008


Dawn breaks gently over the lawns of the University of Technology in Kingston, Jamaica, conjuring a rainbow to greet the new day. But the calm belies a gathering storm. In the distance, black clouds are menacing the foothills of the Blue Mountains, and the serenity of this winter morning is about to be shattered by a very big man in a very small vehicle.

At the corner of St Kitts Close and Trinidad Avenue, coach Stephen Francis is endangering the suspension on a golf cart while barking instructions at a group of around 50 extravagantly muscled young men and women. When they are not standing around looking exhausted, the members of the MVP Track and Field Club are running extremely fast up and down a four-storey outdoor fire escape.

But Francis seems dissatisfied with their efforts. A portly, tracksuited disciplinarian - sunglasses on head, whistle in mouth, stopwatch at the ready - he appears pained. It has just gone 6am and his star pupil, Asafa Powell, the world-record holder at 100metres, has finally arrived, an hour and 20 minutes late for training. Powell's excuse will not win him any medals for originality. Apparently his alarm failed to go off.

'Do you need me to buy you a clock, Powell?' explodes Francis, from the driver's seat of his beleaguered cart, where I am perched beside him. He is gripping the steering wheel with furious intensity, even though we are at a standstill. 'I cannot abide this foolishness, Powell! I cannot tolerate it! Give me 25 runs up the hill. Go!'

The fastest man in the world shuffles off rather sullenly, with a look of wounded pride, and then begins to jog slowly up the potholed incline, his goateed chin buried inside his red windproof. This surliness further enrages Francis: 'When I say sprint I mean sprint, Powell. I don't mean jog!'

Coach Francis is soppy-stern, really. He is a pantomime baddy, fuming and fulminating but simultaneously struggling to suppress a grin. A bachelor, with no kids, he clearly adores his athletes. And he deserves respect. He is, after all, the man who spotted the potential in an also-ran high-school athlete and turned him into a world-beater. A world-beater who concedes he sometimes needs a push.

'I'm not 100 per cent a hard trainer,' Powell tells me the following day, out of Francis's earshot. 'Sometimes I will miss practice. If coach tells me to do 400m, I'll do half. It's laziness I guess. But it's very, very hard. You have to be willing to bear a lot of pain. I'm not as dedicated as he wants me to be.' This is not the kind of admission one expects from an elite athlete. On his day, Powell can be as reticent as any tongue-tied post-match interviewee but, when the mood takes him, he can also be a good deal more candid.

Surprisingly, Powell is yet to win a medal at a major championship, but he is consistently the fastest man in history over 100m. Come the Olympics in August, he will be one of the most high-profile competitors in Beijing, thanks to his continuing duel with the world champion and his closest rival, the American Tyson Gay.

Tall (he is 6ft 3in) and handsome, Powell turned 25 in November, shortly after I travelled to Jamaica to meet him, and has now been at the very top of his game for almost three years.

That he is not world famous is testament to the slow decline of track and field in general, and sprinting in particular, as a popular spectator sport. While in other disciplines prominent sportsmen yet to hit their peaks - Cristiano Ronaldo, Rafael Nadal, Lewis Hamilton - are internationally feted, outside Jamaica Powell is largely unknown except by those who follow athletics.

The reasons are many, but the most obvious one is drugs. As with cycling, the integrity of Powell's chosen sport has been repeatedly compromised and observers have grown rightly sceptical of the achievements of top runners. Since Ben Johnson was stripped of his gold medal three days after breaking the world record in the 100m final at the Seoul Olympics in 1988 - he had tested positive for an anabolic steroid - the event's image has been tarnished and a series of 100m runners, including two American former world-record holders, Tim Montgomery and Justin Gatlin, and Britain's own 1992 Olympic champion, Linford Christie, have been banned or suspended for testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs.

'Some people are always going to have it in the back of their heads that I'm taking drugs,' Powell says. 'That has become the normal thing to think about a sprinter who is running so fast. I don't know what I can do about that.'

For what it is worth, Powell says that he has never taken performance-enhancing drugs, and would never consider doing so. 'Never,' he says. 'I've never even been approached.'

Steve Cram, a former world-record holder and an Olympic silver medallist at 1,500m, who is now an athletics presenter for the BBC, is among the sport's keenest observers. 'It's not Asafa Powell's fault,' Cram says, 'but because of what's happened in the past with other 100m runners testing positive for drugs, everyone [in the media] is worried about getting behind someone like him, in case it blows up in their faces. They're scared to embrace him for that reason.'

As a result, continues Cram, 'athletics is by and large not on terrestrial television. So it's difficult for the public to get to know these runners. But it's a shame. [Powell] is a victim of what we've been going through for the last 20 years.'

The sport's marginalisation is regrettable for countless reasons, but Powell, as the fastest man in the world, feels the loss of prestige particularly keenly. And, without wishing to trade in empty cliches, he has achieved his success against the odds, on his terms, and despite a series of personal tragedies, including the deaths of two of his brothers and the shooting of his father.

Powell first broke the 100m world record on 14 June 2005, in Athens. He ran 9.77 seconds, beating Montgomery's mark (now expunged from the records) by one hundredth of a second. 'I can't explain that day,' Powell says. 'I felt normal. I just ran, and then I saw 9.77 and I was waiting for the clock to change but it stayed there and everyone started to jump around. It was crazy. It didn't feel real.' As if to prove this was no fluke, during 2006 he equalled his own record twice, running 9.77 in Gateshead and Zurich. Briefly, he had to share the record with Gatlin, who ran 9.77 in May of that year. But on 9 September 2007, in an opening heat at an IAAF Grand Prix meeting in Rieti, central Italy, Powell put his dominance of the event beyond doubt, running an unprecedented 9.74 and, incredibly, appearing to deliberately slow down for the last 20 metres.

'I slowed down because it was the first run of the day and I had two more to go,' he says, 'and Coach told me to take it easy. So when I got to 80m I thought I'd better take my feet off the gas.' How does he account for the extraordinary time? 'I can't explain it. I don't know why I can do that and somebody else can't.'

By the time we meet, Powell had run 31 100m races in under 10 seconds, including the five fastest times ever. And all this while training with a little known, underfunded and sparsely resourced athletics club in unlovely, crime- and poverty-plagued Kingston, far from the track-and-field centres of excellence in Europe and North America.

Powell's continued residence in Jamaica is one of the things that make him stand out among the island's best runners, who traditionally decamp for US universities as soon as their talent is spotted. Not only has Powell stayed put but he has kept faith with the slightly maverick figure of coach Francis and his MVP club, a proudly outsider institution (the acronym stands for 'Maximising Velocity and Power') which has frequently been at odds with the Jamaican Amateur Athletics Federation, the Jamaican Olympic Association and even the government.

'We have not received one cent from any of them,' Francis told me, not without bitterness. 'They channel their money elsewhere and leave us high and dry. They are uncomfortable with our success. They are embarrassed by us.'

Jamaica has long produced world-class sprinters but seldom been able to hold on to them. The Canadians Donovan Bailey and Ben Johnson were both born on the island, as was Linford Christie. Merlene Ottey won eight Olympic medals at five separate Games for Jamaica, but in 2002 began to compete for her adopted nation, Slovenia. Jamaica's current women's 200m Olympic champion and 100m world champion, Veronica Campbell, graduated from the University of Arkansas. Her numerous medal-winning relay partners are all, like her, Jamaica-born but were educated and trained in America.

MVP was founded in 1999 by club president Bruce James, secretary David Noel, Stephen Francis and his younger brother Paul, who is marginally less gruff but scarcely less rotund. The idea, according to the elder Francis, was that while American universities would cream off the top five or six Jamaican high-school athletes, MVP would be able to attract the seventh and eighth best, who otherwise, having failed to make it to the States, might not pursue the sport.

Basing themselves at U-Tech, initially they funded the club from their own pockets (Coach Francis, in a previous life, was a management consultant; Bruce James worked for Citibank). But their first successes, notably with Brigitte Foster-Hylton, who took silver in the 100m hurdles at the 2003 World Athletics Championships, attracted sponsors including Nike and Air Jamaica. In 2004, MVP high jumper Germaine Mason became world number two. The following year Michael Frater came second in the final of the world championships 100m, and Sherone Simpson equalled that feat in the women's 200m. Meanwhile, a number of MVP athletes were winning medals as members of Jamaica relay teams.


But it is Powell who has brought the club international recognition. It's his success that paid for the shiny new executive Audi in which Coach Francis takes naps between training sessions.

Francis first spotted Powell in 2001, when the sprinter was 18 and his best time was 10.85. 'I didn't see the world's fastest man,' he says. 'But I did see someone we could train. Attitude is more important than anything in making the transition from promising schoolboy to professional athlete, and once he started training I knew he was going to be special.'

Powell was, by his own admission, far from the finished product when he began at MVP. 'I couldn't start,' he says. 'I used to lean way back when I was running. My arms weren't going up. My knees were going too high. Everything was wrong, everything.'

'It's true. He couldn't start at all,' Francis says. 'Now he's the best-starting big man in history.'

'I'm a fast learner,' Powell says.

It is nevertheless difficult, looking at the facilities at U-Tech, to believe the scale of his achievement. The fastest man in the world, along with the rest of the MVP team, runs on an unkempt grass track, soft and muddy on the days I visited because of the sporadic rain. The gym is more basic still, a tiny, dilapidated space of not more than 400sq ft, bolted on to the university's auditorium. I spent an afternoon wedged into a corner there, watching Powell and his friends perform painful circuits of dead lifts, biceps curls, squats, rolls and jumps.

The fabric on the benches is split and spilling foam and what machines there are are old and outmoded. The gym cannot possibly accommodate everyone at the club; even though the athletes are split into groups and the weights sessions are staggered, some still have to do their reps in the locker area or tiny ante-rooms. It's always painful to watch someone pushing themselves further than their body is telling them it will allow, but it is even harder when they are world-class athletes forced to lie on the floor in a hallway. Other facilities believed to be fundamental to Western athletes - sports psychologists, dieticians - are noticeable only by their absence.

But Powell is sanguine. It doesn't bother him, he says, when I ask if he wouldn't like to have the same training infrastructure as, say, Tyson Gay has in Arkansas. 'I can guarantee you that there is not one thing they can do at their gym that we can't do at ours,' Powell says. 'I'm not a fussy person. I accept what I have. I do what I can with it.'

Steve Cram says this attitude is less surprising than it might seem. 'Training is all about creating an environment that brings out the best in the athlete,' says the man famous for training by running through the streets of his native Jarrow, Tyne and Wear. 'Obviously, Jamaica brings out the best in [Powell]. It wouldn't be right for him to change that at this point. You can't run 9.74 without doing something right.'

Powell never wanted to go to America. 'I'm at home here, with my friends. I'm comfortable, I have nothing to worry about. And people feel good that one of their stars has stayed in Jamaica.'

The first few times I met the fastest man in the world, he struck me as remote, perhaps unfriendly. Asafa Powell, even his mother agrees, is quiet to the point of taciturn. At training, he can cut a diffident figure. While his fellow MVP athletes are flirting with each other, and clowning around, he remains largely impassive.

On the morning of my second day in Jamaica I spend some time with the athletes at their track house, where I watch them trash-talking in

patois (some I had translated for me by a friendly 800m runner, some he preferred not to render in English) and breaking out in spontaneous dance routines to Soulja Boy's insidious hit 'Crank Dat'. When Powell arrives he stands apart, not arrogant or dismissive, just separate.

On my first night in town, the senior figures of the MVP came to dinner at OSM's hotel, without realising that the only tables available were at the in-house Japanese restaurant. Much as I tried to interest Powell in sushi and sake, he was having none of it. It is not that he has a special diet, or is teetotal (on the contrary, he likes fried chicken and Guinness), it's just that he doesn't enjoy 'funny' food.


Nor was he much interested in conversation. Others around the table swapped notes on their experiences of foreign travel, but Powell would not be drawn. He seemed bored and distracted. How did he like the food in Italy? 'It's all right.' What did he eat in Japan, if not raw fish? 'KFC.' What were his impressions of England, where he has competed on a number of occasions? 'All right.'

The following day, however, as we drove the hour or so from Kingston to Linstead, the small town where he was raised, he began to open up. Indeed, by the end of the day he had become almost rashly exuberant. It's difficult to imagine a Premier League footballer confessing to a journalist that it's hard - sometimes even impossible - to remain entirely faithful to his girlfriend. Powell has been seeing Yanique, a graduate student, for three-and-a-half years, but there are a lot of 'beautiful Jamaican girls' and, as he says himself, there's only one world's fastest man. I point out that in future he might be better off not confiding this sort of thing to the international media, at least not on the record. But Powell just giggles.

(Coach Francis, incidentally, assures me that sexual relationships between MVP athletes are banned: 'If a girl from the country comes here to ################ Asafa, my rule is: "Go ahead, but you won't be needed in training." I can always tell.' But when I ask the athletes how well this rule works, they raise their eyebrows knowingly.)

Still more difficult to envision is a European or American star pulling over to the side of a dangerously curvy highway in order to point out a particularly interesting rock formation.

'Can you see it?' asks Asafa, pointing across the river.

'Where?'

'Over there, see?'

'What am I looking for?'

'There, through those trees. The poom-poom rock!'

And suddenly the scales fall from my eyes. Sure enough, there in the side of a mountain is a large crevasse that looks uncannily like a sculpture of a vagina, complete with head-high ################oris.

'Take a picture!' suggests Powell to Chris, the OSM photographer, who half-heartedly obliges before we all climb back into our host's turbo-charged Toyota Tundra. Asafa Powell, despite the responsibilities that he carries on his broad shoulders, is in many ways still a kid.

The youngest of six boys born to William and Cislin Powell, Asafa had a childhood that set him apart from his peers, not least because both his parents are pastors in the Redemption National Church of God. The church's minibus sits outside the family home, opposite the Real Flex pub, where later we will repair for Red Stripes.

'All my friends used to go out and party,' remembers Powell, 'but I wasn't allowed to stay out. I knew it was the right way. I was never rebellious, never got into fights. All my brothers were always close. We looked after each other.'

He remains devout, even though his faith has been cruelly tested. In 2002, his brother Michael was shot dead in a New York taxi cab, apparently by an opportunist mugger. The following year another brother, Donovan, also a talented sprinter, collapsed on an American football pitch. 'It was a heart attack,' Powell says. 'No one knew he was ill. He seemed very healthy.'

After Michael died, during what was Powell's first full season on the international circuit, 'I wanted to give up. But my bigger brother called me and told me to keep doing it because that's what Michael would want. I did it for the family.

'But in 2003, when [Donovan] died, that really took a hold on me. I started to wonder, "Who's next? Which one of my brothers is going next?"'

Despite being the baby of the family, Powell's success means he feels like the senior member. 'Yes, I'm the youngest,' he says, 'but I'm really carrying the weight of the family on my shoulders. That should be the job of the first brother. But I took up that responsibility and I'm just trying to stay strong.'

The fruits of some of Powell's labours can be seen at the family home in Linstead, in the parish of St Catherine. It is a beautiful spot, a yellow-and-green two-storey house perched on the side of a steep hill surrounded by thick vegetation, with old cars in various states of disrepair at the front and a chicken coop out the back.

Asafa's success has brought great happiness but also suffering. A few years ago his father William narrowly avoided death when he was shot in the jaw by burglars, an event that may have been connected to the fact that his youngest son, as one of Jamaica's biggest stars, is perceived to be very rich. During the afternoon I spend in Linstead, more than one supplicant arrives at the house to ask for money. One of these is a ragged local 12-year-old boy with toothache. He needs money to pay a dentist, and is kindly asked to come back later when William will have more time to talk to him.

'Everyone knows my father,' Asafa tells me. 'Even before I became the person I am now I was very popular back home, because of him. He is very respected in the town.'

Outside the house is the road where the brothers would race each other as boys. Asafa was quick, like his brothers and his father before them - William tells me he never met a man who could beat him in a race, until he became a dad - but there was nothing to suggest he would become a professional athlete.

'I was always running but nothing serious,' Asafa says. 'It was just bragging rights: I'd go on the street or the track and say to my friends, "I bet I can beat you." But I wasn't really interested in track and field until my last year at high school.'

Asafa had other interests. 'I always wanted to be a football player. In Jamaica those are the two sports that people normally do: football and track and field. But football is a sport you can do every day, just for fun.' Failing that, he pictured a career as a mechanic.

'I wanted to be involved with cars,' he says. 'I was focused on that. I wasn't focused on going abroad, going to school. That wasn't part of my plans. It's my father really. My father is always working on cars, and giving them to me to work on, from when I was a kid.'

Today he has six cars, including a sparkling white Mercedes, a photo of which serves as the screensaver on his BlackBerry, and his pride and joy, a souped-up Nissan Skyline. It is faster than a Ferrari, he says. 'You can get 1,500hp from it. You can get nothing but 600 from a Ferrari. That's why I have mostly Japanese cars.'

His best experience of foreign travel so far was his trip to Osaka last summer, because he loved seeing all the Japanese cars in situ. But that was also his worst foreign trip. Because in Osaka, for some reason, he came unstuck in what has so far been the biggest race of his life.

Asafa Powell has been described, and with justification, as the big man for the small occasion. A choker. Almost all his outstanding performances and record-breaking times have been achieved at unimportant meetings, and against second-rate competition. When it comes to major championships, against opponents to reckon with, he consistently fails to perform. So far his only major gold medal was at the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne in 2006. And, as he says himself, Commonwealth gold means 'nothing really'.

Powell's failures at crucial moments date back to 2003, when he was disqualified in the quarter-finals at the world championships for two false starts - an event overshadowed by the antics of the American Jon Drummond, who was also disqualified for false-starting and refused to leave the track. 'I got into a mix-up there,' Powell says. 'But no one knew me, so it didn't matter too much. It wasn't until the Olympics that anyone knew me.'

Mystifyingly, he came fifth in Athens, while his future nemesis, Justin Gatlin, took gold. 'I didn't run as well as I thought I would,' he says now.

He missed the 2005 world championships through injury, coasted through the Commonwealth Games as world-record holder and approached last summer's world championships in apparently fine fettle. His showdown with the new American prodigy, Tyson Gay, was much anticipated.

For Powell, it was a disaster. He came third behind Gay and the Bahamian Derrick Atkins (a runner frequently but erroneously reported to be Powell's second cousin). He clocked 9.96, two tenths of a second off his best. More bizarrely, this was a race he had been leading until the latter stages. Watch it again on YouTube and he seems to slow down as soon as he senses Gay drawing up to his shoulder. After the race, he admitted that he 'gave up' after 70 metres, when he realised that Gay was going to run him close. 'I panicked,' he said.

'Every single part of that race was totally wrong,' Coach Francis tells me. 'In Osaka he was focused on trying to beat people. That is a mistake. In any race you have to make assumptions: if you run 9.68 you will not be beaten. But he didn't run his own race. He brought his game down to their level. His technique fell apart. He got distracted. Before the race I told everyone, "Look here, understand that nothing this season indicates that he will win the gold medal. Only a blind man would pick him over Tyson Gay."'

Francis believes that most observers, even passionate sprint fans, remain ignorant of the exacting demands of the shortest distance in outdoor athletics. 'People don't really understand what it is like to run 100m,' he says. 'They think you just line up at the start and go as fast as you can towards the finish.'

Not so. 'The 100 metres, essentially,' Francis continues, 'is about the pursuit of perfection. In other words, the person who wins is the person who makes no mistakes. If you make a mistake, there is no prospect of recovery. And anything can cause you to make a mistake. Even if your finger is hurting, that can affect your race.

'The champion,' he continues, 'can script his race: how many strides to take, how much effort to put in and at what point you put the effort in. You must have strategies. You have to resist the natural urge to run as fast as you can from the beginning, otherwise you will run out of energy at 60m. It's short but it's complicated.'

Powell clarifies. 'Everything matters,' he says. 'Your position in the blocks, when you exit the blocks, the angle of your exit. The first 20m you want to get your strides as long as possible. From 20 to 50 you're still getting the strides long but not too long. You have to cut it down because that's when you start coming up, getting fully upright when you get to 40 or 50m. It's like when an aeroplane takes off. You don't level off for a while. Then once you're upright, that's when you start to lift your knees. At 60m you stop trying. Because after 60 you can't go any faster. You have to try and maintain. You start relaxing and moving your arms.' At its best, Powell says, it feels like flying.

Francis approaches sprinting scientifically. 'Asafa,' he says, 'has always been a big man who takes small strides. When he ran 9.77 in 2005 he took 48 strides. [Former record holder Maurice] Greene is shorter, but when he ran 9.78 he took only 45 strides. When Asafa took only 45 strides, in Rieti, he ran 9.74.'

So if he takes the prescribed number of strides, he will win gold in Beijing? 'If anybody wants to beat him they will have to run 9.6 and I don't see anyone doing that. I haven't seen that person so far.' Tyson Gay, perhaps? 'Like I said, I haven't seen that person so far.'

'There's a lot of pressure at the big championships and the thing to do is stay focused,' Powell says. 'If I do what I'm supposed to do there's no way anyone can beat me. Tyson Gay is good. He works hard. But he knows I'm faster than him.'

The journey from bustling New Kingston to the relative calm of U-Tech is a gentle climb through some of the city's smarter suburbs, passing the famous botanical gardens and the city's biggest tourist trap, the Bob Marley museum.

We turn up for early-morning training again on the last day of our stay. Out by the old volleyball court, Paul Francis is puffing on a cigarette, putting a group of athletes through a series of stretching exercises.

Next to us a cheerful lady is unloading boxes of Mother's fish patties from the back of her Nissan van. They are destined for Andrea's Grocery and Snacks, and later for the belly of Sherone Simpson, the 200m runner who is currently flat on her back, her legs in the air, a sheen of sweat causing her body to glisten in the sunshine.

For the final time, I am taken aback by the make-and-mend culture that pervades this place. 'A lack of money or facilities is just an excuse for failure,' says Coach Francis when I catch up with him to say goodbye.

'Of course I'd like a new gym, or a new bus so we can explore different training surfaces. It's true that we are not adequately funded. But success is all about hard work, about repetition. That's what separates Tiger Woods and Roger Federer from the opposition: they keep doing the same things over and over. It's not about what equipment they use.'

I shake hands and wish Asafa good luck at this summer's Olympics. He is typically phlegmatic: 'All I have to do is attend training and do what [Coach Francis] tells me to do. I put myself in his hands. I have a lot of faith in him. We'll see how it works out.'

'There is a lot of pressure on him,' Francis says. 'Pressure from his family, his friends, and the people of Jamaica. He's like Ronaldinho here, it's the same kind of adoration. It'll be a national holiday if he wins.'

'Sometimes I do feel like I'm the Prime Minister of Jamaica,' Powell says. 'It's hard because every day on the street I always have people coming up: "Please, you must win the Olympics." I have a lot of coaches in Jamaica.' This time, he says, he won't let them down




Asafa Powell in the garden of his parents' home in Linstead, Jamaica



Asafa Powell and fellow athletes are exhausted after training at the Maximising Velocity and Power Track and Field club in Kingston, Jamaica



Athletes train at the MVP club in Kinsgton



MVP club athletes dance to music being played in a car outside the club in Kingston



Powell speaks on his phone outside the MVP club



Asafa Powell with his mother at his parents' home



Photographs of Powell and his family adorn the walls of the family home



Powell relaxes at his parents' home

Nesta Carter (born November 10, 1985) is a Jamaican sprinter and member of the 2007 World Championship silver medal 4 x 100 metres relay team. Carter has seen recent successes in Germany and Brazil, winning both 100 m races there.[1] Carter is coached by Stephen Francis and is associated with the MVP Track and Field Club.


Personal Bests

Event Location Time
100M Stockholm, Sweden 9.98s
200M Kingston, Jamaica 20.38s

Medal record

Olympic Games
Gold 2008 Beijing 4 × 100 m relay

ISTAF Berlin
Gold 2008 ISTAF Berlin 100 m

Grande Premio Brasil Caixa de Atletismo
Gold 2008 Grande Premio Brasil Caixa de Atletismo 100 m

World Championships
Silver 2007 Osaka 4 × 100 m relay


Dwight Thomas




Also gets a medal for JA being on in Relay Semi

Dwight Thomas (born September 23, 1980) is a Jamaican sprinter mainly competing in the 100 metres event.

He won the bronze medal at the IAAF World Junior Championships in 1998, competed in the 2000 and 2004 Summer Olympics and finished 5th at the 2005 World Championships. Later in 2005 he won a bronze medal at the 3rd IAAF World Athletics Final.


Personal bests

100 metres - 10.00 (2005)
200 metres - 20.32 (2007)
110 metres hurdles - 13.34 (2004)

Michael Frater (born October 6, 1982 in Manchester, Jamaica) is a Jamaican sprinter. Frater was knocked out in the semi-finals of the 100 m sprint at the 2004 Athens Olympics. A year later, in the 2005 World Championships, he won the silver medal in the 100 metres with 10.05. He was disqualified in the semi-finals of the 100 m sprint because of a false start at the 2006 Commonwealth Games.

In a record-breaking day highlighted by Veronica Campbell's emphatic victory in the female 100 meters in a world-leading time of 10.89, Micheal Frater missed out on the road to Osaka, Japan when he clocked a less than impressive 10.46. Frater's only chance was left up to the final semi-final of the day but the exploits of schoolboy senstion Yohan Blake (10.19) pushed Nester Carter to run a blistering 10.17 thus making the third heat the fastest heat of the day. This meant that the world championships silver medalist was out of the finals and as a result did not make the Jamaican team to Osaka.

On June 28, 2008, Michael Frater finished third in the Jamaica National Championships (behind Usain Bolt 9.85, Asafa Powell 9.97) in 10.04, all three runners easing off before the finish line, and qualified for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

His personal best of 9.97 s was set in Beijing on August 16, 2008 when he finished 6th in the Olympic Final.

Medal record

Olympic Games
Gold 2008 Beijing 4x100 m relay

World Championships
Silver 2005 Helsinki 100 metres

Pan American Games
Gold 2003 Santo Domingo 100 metres


Michael Frater - Training for greatness
published: Sunday | February 26, 2006

Avia Ustanny, Outlook Writer

AT 5:30 IN the morning when the heat of the sun is still a very distant memory, Michael Frater and his fellow sprinters are warming up in the dark preparing for their laps around the dew-kissed earth on the University of Technology track field.

We rendezvoused with the 23-year-old athlete at 8:00 a.m. on one such morning two weeks ago, midway in his training programme.

"I want to be what every kid dreams of. I want to be Olympic champion," Frater said with frank calm. If it takes a six-hour training day, six days each week, every week, this is what he is committed to doing.

Michael Frater was the 22-year-old who last year captured the attention of all Jamaicans in the August 2005 World Championships, when he won the silver medal in the 100 metres in 10.05 seconds.

He was awarded the silver after a photo-finish with resurgent dethroned champion Kim Collins of St. Kitts and Nevis - both clocked 10.05.

His comeback, after being knocked out in the semi-finals at the 2004 Olympics was due to consistent training. Keeping in form requires a rigid regimen of everyday training.

Frater loves the routines.

Sports is in his blood.

He was born on October 10, 1982, in Manchester to mother, Monica Frater, a teacher and a sprinter. His father, Lyndell Frater, former Member of Parliament for southern Trelawny was a cricketer. His brother, sprinter Lindel Frater, was a 2000 Sydney Olympian and former Texas Christian University (TCU) sprinter who earned five All-American awards in his outdoor season - including three times in the 100m and twice as a part of the TCU's 4x100 relay team.

Frater grew up in Ulster Spring, Trelawny, passing the Common Entrance Examinations for Knox College where, when he attempted to try out for the track team he was told that he was too young and too small. But he was not to be discouraged.

At Wolmer's Boys' School where he went to be with his brothers, his way was made easier, as he was recommended to coach Stephen Francis by his sibling. He made an immediate impact at this school, never losing at Boys' Champs until in his final year when he was sent at age 15 to the United States to continue his education and training at the Boyd Anderson High School in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

DISCUSSIONS

His parents, Michael Frater says, have had constant discussions with him about his choice of career.

"My parents said do not put all your eggs in one basket. Make sure you have a degree."

Knowing that the body is subject to injuries which can change his chances of success, he accepted their advice. He was later to complete a first degree in political science in preparation for studies in law, should he ever need another option.

But, while still at high school in Fort Lauderdale, he was named the Gatorade Outstanding High School Track Athlete in the state of Florida (in 2000) after becoming the Florida state champion in the 100 metres. He also earned all-state honours in track as both a junior and a senior.

Winning a scholarship to Texas Christian University (TCU), Michael Frater was selected in 2003 as the Verizon Academic All-District VI first team for track and field and cross-country athletes in the university division.

A junior with 3.49 grade point average point average in political science, he was having another good year.

ATHLETE OF THE YEAR

Later, he was named the Conference U.S.A. Outdoor Track Athlete of the Year after winning both the 100 metres (10.07) and 200 metres (20.45), and ran the second leg on the winning 4x100 metre relay team (39.17).

In 2004, Michael Frater was National Collegiate Athletics Association 100m silver medallist.

Although he experienced some hamstring injury, he has recovered 100 per cent, going on to consistently improve his performance.Before he collected silver in the World Championships, few paid him the attention he deserved. But, all along, Michael was doing better and better.

Frater was a Pan American Games gold medallist in 2004. His personal best was 10.03 seconds in the 100m, done in Athens Olympic Stadium, the same race where teammate and training partner Asafa Powell broke the world record by running 9.77 seconds, on June 14, 2005.

A BREAKTHROUGH YEAR

Michael Frater describes 2005 as a breakthrough year.

"I started running pretty early. When this happens you have to avoid allowing the season to take a toll (physically)."

Coaches and support staff, he says, were useful in helping him and other Jamaicans to concentrate on training which, the athlete points out, is more important than just focusing on racing.

"They say, 'look at the bigger picture'."

It was this perspective that allowed him to do so well in August last year. "We executed and we delivered. The feeling was indescribable."

The support of coaches has also helped him since the hamstring injury which prevented him from delivering even faster times for the rest of 2005.

Michael has been fully recovered since October 2005 and consistently in training. While coach Stephen Francis sometimes requires the runners to leave home at five in the morning for training, more usually he says, training takes place in the afternoon, extending from 2:00 p.m. to around 7:30 in the evening.

The athlete begins with strength training then moves to the track before breaking at 5:00 p.m. for plyometrics which is an excellent way for conditioned athletes to increase and develop their jumping, sprinting and explosive power.

He then goes home to eat a hearty dinner and rest in preparing for another day. Healthy meals are always on the menu. His six-hour training schedule is an everyday event, excepting on Sunday.

Frater states that his chosen career has been very rewarding and, were he to, later follow in his fathers footstep in politics, he says, there is no doubt that he would do everything in his power to get more "kids involved in sports".

"If kids are involved in sports, involved in competition, I don't think they will have time to get in trouble. If they are using their aggression track, in football on the court, it won't be used elsewhere." Sports he also notes builds the team spirit.

The downsides to a career in sports are very little.

The athlete admits that since winning the silver medal some people have been looking at him differently and there are some individuals who want to hang around for the wrong reasons.

But, "it is up to you to know the good from the bad. I know how to deal with that," he states.

He is very optimistic for 2006 which he notes will be another long year although there's no major meet apart from the Commonwealth Games in Australia. In 2008 the Olympic Games in London is expected to be a golden year for him.

"I have always dreamt about (being a champion). There is no doubt in my mind that you have to dream it in order to achieve it. If it does not happen as long as I know that I have done my best, I will be satisfied. This is what I have chosen to do right now and I am going to put my all into it."

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