As a reg­u­lar read­er of your col­umn, I feel oblig­ed to re­spond to to­day's. I un­der­stand that not be­ing a sports­man, you may be un­aware of some of the de­tails in­volved in the groom­ing of top lev­el ath­letes, but a look at the re­cent­ly made TV pro­duc­tion, "Red White and Black" would have giv­en you a glimpse of what goes on in train­ing. I re­fer par­tic­u­lar­ly to the clips of George Bovell at his train­ing camp in Michi­gan. The days when world beat­ers emerged out of back­yard gyms van­ished with Rod­ney Wilkes, Kil­go­ur et al. My point is that we sim­ply do not have the in­fra­struc­ture for this kind of train­ing, nor do we have the reg­u­lar com­pe­ti­tion that af­fords the ath­lete the op­por­tu­ni­ty to pit him­self against the best of the best. To in­vest in such in­fra­struc­ture would not be fea­si­ble when ba­sic sports fa­cil­i­ties are in need of up­grad­ing. The best op­tion for tak­ing our high school tal­ent to the high­est lev­el re­mains sports schol­ar­ships to US. The sys­tem works.

Al­low me to re­fer as well to two state­ments in your ar­ti­cle. "Fail­ure in their quest to bring home the ba­con" and "some­thing tan­gi­ble to show for their ef­forts" are in­dica­tive of mis­un­der­stand­ing the essence of sports. Pol­i­tics and busi­ness have used the me­dia to push the idea that it is about who has the most medals and the most gold. Sad­ly, the pub­lic has bought it. While ath­letes are elat­ed to come out on top, what pleas­es them most is the qual­i­ty of their per­for­mance. Take a look at the men's long jump win­ner. There was no ela­tion there be­cause the dis­tances were so poor that win­ning gold was no re­al achieve­ment. That was medi­oc­rity. Com­pare that to the men's 100 me­tres fi­nal where, with the ex­cep­tion of Asafa Pow­ell who pulled up in­jured, every run­ner had a sub 10 clock­ing. That is what it is about. Run­ning your heart out to achieve your best. That is what we ap­plaud. That's not medi­oc­rity. That is ath­let­ics at its high­est. The women's 100 too was a blis­ter­ing race and Kel­ly Ann Bap­tiste ran a splen­did 10.94. Sub 11 secs is not medi­oc­rity. I can go on but you can do the re­search your­self, if you are so in­clined, to see that our ath­letes de­serve the ac­co­lades they are get­ting. This group is the best we have sent in a long time. We must con­grat­u­late them.

Jeanette Wilkes Williams

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