​I be­gin to­day’s col­umn on a sad note by ex­press­ing my sin­cer­est con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly, friends, col­leagues, ath­letes, and all of Ja­maica at the pass­ing of the leg­endary, pi­o­neer­ing, and vi­sion­ary track and field coach, Stephen Fran­cis.

​He was a Caribbean man, if ever there was one. “Fran­no”, as he was fond­ly called, was trans­for­ma­tion­al not on­ly for brand Ja­maica but, I would dare add, for the Caribbean’s Olympic rep­u­ta­tion. Fran­no, along with a group of friends, vis­it­ed T&T at Car­ni­val time qui­et­ly and with­out fan­fare. On the oc­ca­sions that I saw him, I al­ways re­spect­ed his pri­va­cy and space, but I al­ways chuck­led at the num­ber of fete and event bands on his wrist—it told me that Tri­ni Car­ni­val was a “ting” for Fran­no.

​The train­ing group Fran­cis co-found­ed in 1999—the Max­imis­ing Ve­loc­i­ty & Pow­er Track & Field Club, or MVP—be­came a pre­mier train­ing cen­tre. The part­ner­ship be­tween the MVP Track Club and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy, Ja­maica (UTech) in 2001 pro­vid­ed an al­ter­na­tive to US col­le­giate schol­ar­ships.

​“Stephen Fran­cis changed the tra­jec­to­ry of Ja­maican ath­let­ics for the bet­ter. He proved that Ja­maican ath­letes, guid­ed by Ja­maican coach­es, sup­port­ed by Ja­maican man­age­ment, and train­ing in Ja­maica, could be­come the very best in the world,” Bruce James, pres­i­dent of MVP, said in a state­ment.

​There are those who may seek to de­ny as­pects of the ac­co­lades show­ered on Fran­cis, claim­ing per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ences that re­veal their own opin­ion or ver­sion of the re­al “Fran­no”. How­ev­er, what no amount of naysay­ing can de­ny is that Stephen Fran­cis was the cat­a­lyst for Ja­maica’s glob­al rep­u­ta­tion as a sprint fac­to­ry. He was a pi­o­neer and a vi­sion­ary who saw, in his mind’s eye, a dif­fer­ent fu­ture for Ja­maican track and field. Co-found­ing MVP in Sep­tem­ber 1999 was an act of en­tre­pre­neur­ial in­no­va­tion that com­plete­ly changed the game. In leav­ing the world of fi­nance to ded­i­cate him­self to his vi­sion, he was bold and coura­geous. The eco­nom­ic mod­el his club cre­at­ed for Caribbean sports is an MBA busi­ness case study.

​The re­al test now will be how those who ben­e­fit­ed from be­ing in his or­bit car­ry for­ward and build up­on the “Fran­no” lega­cy.

​Farewell, Stephen “Fran­no” Fran­cis. Rest in peace, leg­end.

Ravet pa janm gen re­zon dou­van poul—Trans­la­tion: A cock­roach is nev­er right in front of a chick­en. Mean­ing: Jus­tice will al­ways be on the side of the strong.

Bel dan pa di zan­mi—Trans­la­tion: Beau­ti­ful teeth do not mean friend. Mean­ing: On­ly be­cause one per­son smiles at you, that does not mean that he is your friend.

Kay koule twonpe solèy, men li pa twonpe lapli—Trans­la­tion: A leaky roof tricks the sun, but it does not de­ceive the rain. Mean­ing: A per­son’s mis­takes will be ex­posed soon­er or lat­er.

​The pre­ced­ing three Hait­ian Cre­ole proverbs are my re­sponse to all my friends and those who aren’t ex­act­ly friends as such but who al­so asked for my thoughts on the FI­FA de­ci­sion re­gard­ing the star USA play­er, fol­low­ing an al­leged tele­phone call be­tween US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and FI­FA pres­i­dent Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no.

​At the time of sub­mit­ting to­day’s Things That Mat­ter col­umn to the ed­i­tor (the dead­line is usu­al­ly Mon­day by 12 noon), the out­comes of the Bel­gium FA ap­peal and the ac­tu­al USA vs Bel­gium match are not yet known. In any event, nei­ther out­come mat­ters. The rel­e­vance and va­lid­i­ty of these three Hait­ian proverbs are nei­ther di­min­ished nor com­pro­mised.

Let me, how­ev­er, just say this: the in­san­i­ty con­tin­ues, and noth­ing will sur­prise me.