Tony Becca
THE COMMONWEALTH Games is not the Olympic Games, and neither is it the World Championships.
However, Jamaica's performance in Melbourne was awesome.
In winning 10 gold medals and 22 medals over-all, Jamaica sur-passed the pre-vious best performance of four gold medals in 1958, 1970, 1998 and 2002. The country has bettered its haul of 17 medals in 2002, and on top of that, their dominance of the sprint events was unprecedented.
In a clean sweep, Jamaica, through world record holder Asafa Powell and Sheri-Ann Brooks, won both the men and women 100 metres.
Through Omar Brown and Sherone Simpson, they won both the men and women 200 metres and they won both the 4x100 relays.
On top of that, with Maurice Wignall winning one and Brigitte Foster-Hylton the other, they won the 110 metres hurdles and the 100 metres hurdles, and lest it be forgotten, Jamaica, through Olympic Champion Veronica Campbell and Chris Williams, finished second and third, respectively in the women's 200 and in the men's 200.
GREATNESS IN SPRINTS
Remembering the history of Jamaica and the performance of Jamaicans like Herb McKenley, Don Quarrie, Merlene Ottey, Grace Jackson, Juliet Cuthbert and Campbell at the Olympic Games and the World Championships, however, the performance of Powell and Brooks, Simpson, Brown and company, only underlined Jamaica's greatness in the sprint events.
When one also remembers the performance of the country's hurdlers at the World Championships and the Olympic Games, the performance of people like Winthrop Graham, Deon Hemmings and Danny McFarlane, so too, to a lesser extent, did the performances of Wignall and Foster-Hylton as well as Kemel Thompson who won bronze in the men's 400 hurdles. What was interesting at the 18th Commonwealth Games, however, was not the fact that Jamaica also won a silver medal in the men's 800 and bronze medals in the men's and wo-men's 400 metres. What was really interesting was that Jamaica won medals - gold, silver, and bronze - in non-tradition events like javelin, shot put and decathlon and, to a lesser extent, triple jump and high jump.
Following on her gold medal at the World Championships, Trecia Smith won the gold in the triple jump and Olivia McKoy, with her last throw, won the bronze in the javelin.
Dorian Scott, who, in his last throw, failed by one centimetre to win the gold, won the silver in the shot put, Maurice Smith won the silver in the decathlon, and Karen Beautle won the bronze in the high jump.
Although they failed to add another gold medal when, leading by a huge margin, they dropped the baton on the second exchange in the women's 4x400, and even though, after playing to an exciting tie with Australia, the netball team failed to retain the bronze medal when they lost by one goal to England in another thriller, Jamaica were out-standing, and hats off to them and particularly to those who crashed the party.
Once again, the track athletes dominated the show. This time, however, there were others to toast, and apart from para-lympian Tanto Campbell, they were McKoy, Scott, Maurice Smith and Beautle as well as, for the second time, Trecia Smith.
By their performance they have underlined the growth of Jamaica's track and field, they have demonstrated the depth of Jamaica's track and field.
And although the performance of the country's sprinters, the brilliance of the country's sprinters, will be hard to emulate, they have shown that Jamaicans are not only great sprinters.
