El­sa Wrench

Hel­lo, let me in­tro­duce my­self. El­sa Wrench is not my re­al name. It is a pseu­do­nym I use for this col­umn. But we have be­come such good friends these last few months that I owe it to you, gen­tle read­ers, to re­veal my true se­cret iden­ti­ty.

My re­al name (at least for to­day) is Jew­el Gor­don and I am the iden­ti­cal twin sis­ter of Je­hue Gor­don, the cham­pi­on hur­dler who flung him­self across the fin­ish line in Moscow to win gold for T&T. The re­sem­blance is strik­ing–ex­cept I am fe­male, short­er, fat­ter, slow­er and I nev­er ex­er­cised a day in my life. In high school, when the games mis­tress in­tro­duced the class to hur­dles, I crawled un­der rather than try to heave my­self over the un­co­op­er­a­tive wood­en ob­sta­cles.

Oth­er than that, Je­hue and I are like clones.

As his own imag­i­nary flesh and blood, I have a spe­cial pro­tec­tive in­stinct to­wards him. So, take warn­ing: stop blight­ing the boy by ask­ing what the "guava­ment'' go­ing to give him. Je­hue is much too sen­si­ble, fo­cused and hum­ble to be spoilt by the band­wag­on-join­ers, bar­gain hunters and the quick-fix spe­cial­ists.

"I want to stay hum­ble and stay hun­gry,'' he told in­ter­view­ers af­ter his win. Now there's a lad who has his head on straight.

All the over­flow of at­ten­tion and the shout­ing of his name will not keep him on the track to great­ness. What he needs is what he al­ready has–strength of char­ac­ter. He needs peace and qui­et, a strong coach, good, un­selfish friends, a lov­ing fam­i­ly, and time. Know what he likes to do for fun? Spend­ing time with his younger broth­er, Zaid.

This is a young man who is mo­ti­vat­ed by ad­ver­si­ty and does not need our dis­trac­tions. In 2008, a land­slide took half his fam­i­ly's house in the hills of Mar­aval. Did he boo hoo over it? He told a BBC in­ter­view­er that af­ter the loss, he trained "like a beast'' be­cause he had to be­come some­thing good to help his fam­i­ly.

So, here's the deal. Cel­e­brate Je­hue, don't kill him with ac­co­lades. Give him room to fail be­cause there will be dis­ap­point­ments. Give him the op­por­tu­ni­ty to grow up in­to a re­al­ly good man, not just a good ath­lete. "Be­ing great doesn't come in a hur­ry," Je­hue told a lo­cal blog­ger af­ter the Olympics. He has learned the val­ue of pa­tience. Don't spoil that for him with your hys­ter­i­cal urg­ings.

The rules of en­gage­ment if you want to cel­e­brate Je­hue are as fol­lows:

1. Be re­spect­ful.

2. His ca­reer is gath­er­ing pace. Don't take away that hunger from him by mak­ing him feel he has al­ready done it all.

3. Don't over­whelm him with un­so­licit­ed ad­vice. He clear­ly has the best coun­sel­lor in the world–his moth­er. She is the first per­son he cred­it­ed af­ter win­ning in Moscow, de­clar­ing that she al­ways told him to dip his head at the fin­ish. Mom of the Year!

4. Don't ask for him for any­thing. He signed with Adi­das about three years ago but that is his busi­ness, not yours.

5. Make him proud of us. He could not stop prais­ing T&T on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage. He de­cid­ed to train lo­cal­ly and study sport man­age­ment at UWI, in­stead of grab­bing a schol­ar­ship over­seas. He wants us to be­lieve in our­selves, to know we can achieve big things on our own strength and faith and courage. Give Je­hue rea­son to keep be­liev­ing that. Don't wait to see what next he is go­ing to do re­mind us of our birthright. If you re­al­ly want to cel­e­brate this young cham­pi­on, be a cham­pi­on your­self.

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