NYTimes article on Jamaican sprinting today.
Sprinters, Pride of Jamaica, Are in the SpotlightBy DUFF WILSON
Usain Bolt, left, is the fastest man at 100 and 200 meters this year. His coach, Glen Mills, said Jamaicans were proud of their clean drug record. Sprinters are a source of pride in this island nation, which struggles with crime and poverty despite its reputation as a carefree paradise for tourists. Home to 2.8 million people, Jamaica has produced this year’s four fastest women at 200 meters, four of the top six at 100 meters and the fastest man in both events, Usain Bolt. Jamaicans are expected to medal in the showcase sprinting events and relays next month at the Olympic Games in Beijing.
Although drug cheating and suspensions have cast a pall over track and field, no sprinter who trains primarily in Jamaica has tested positive for steroids, according to the records of track and antidoping groups.
Glen Mills, Bolt’s coach, said Jamaicans were proud of their clean record.
“It is something that we guard dearly, and it is something that the country would turn on you,” he said. “They would turn on you so strong. It’s something they would never forgive. And athletes are aware of that and try to walk the tightrope.”
But Jamaica does not have an independent, out-of-competition testing program for its athletes, nor has it joined the Caribbean Regional Anti-Doping Organization.
Officials from the International Association of Athletics Federations, track and field’s governing body, said they compensated for the country’s lack of testing by flying testers into Jamaica, where the I.A.A.F. conducted more out-of-competition tests than in all but four more populous nations: Russia, Kenya, United States and Greece.
Although no one was accusing Jamaican athletes of doping, many said the country should be doing more to ensure that its premier sport was clean.
Athletes in Kingston, Jamaica, succeed despite often-shabby training facilities.“They need a testing program that starts with their juniors if they really want to play,” John Chaplin, the men’s chairman for USA Track & Field, said. “If you test, you will catch.”
Dr. Adrian Lorde, the chairman of the Caribbean antidoping organization, said, “I don’t have any personal suspicions that the athletes in Jamaica are cheating, but if you don’t test, you don’t know.”
The country’s top male sprinters, Bolt and Asafa Powell, said they were drug-tested more than 20 times a year, in and out of competition, by sports federations and the World Anti-Doping Agency. But up-and-coming Jamaican sprinters were rarely tested, Lorde said.
Government officials, top athletes and coaches, and world antidoping administrators said there was no evidence that Jamaican sprinters were using drugs.
Many said their dominance could be explained by strong school programs and the status of the sport here, where sprinting is considered a national pastime alongside soccer and cricket.
“We love to be dubbed drug free,” the former prime minister Portia Simpson-Miller said.
“Sportsmen and sportswomen inspire the nation,” she added. “It is amazing how they can unite the country and pull all the emotions of people to be successful.”
Jamaica’s tradition of world-class sprinting began long before the steroids age. In 1948, Arthur Wint won Jamaica’s first Olympic gold medal, in the 400 meters. Herb McKenley won four medals from 1948 to 1952, and Merlene Ottey won nine from 1980 to 2000.
Bolt, 21, is the current pride of Jamaica. He broke Powell’s 100-meter world record by four-hundredths of second when he ran a 9.72 in May, even though the 200 is Bolt’s best event. Among the women, Jamaicans ran the world’s fastest 100 each of the last three years: Sherone Simpson in 2006, Veronica Campbell-Brown in 2007 and Kerron Stewart in 2008.
At this year’s Olympic trials, Campbell-Brown ran her season-best time but finished fourth. Stewart won in 10.80 seconds, the best time run this year. Campbell-Brown will defend her Olympic gold medal in the 200 after qualifying with this year’s best time of 21.94.
Top sprinters, coaches and others said the Jamaican public demanded that athletes stayed clean.
“The country’s so small, if you take drugs, you would be embarrassed,” said Michael Frater, who qualified in the 100. “In the States, it’s big, so you can move around, but here, you can’t move.”
Of the 51 Jamaican track and field athletes going to Beijing, 39 are sprinters. Racing is encouraged at an early age. Intense school competitions are a prelude to the annual Champs races with more than 2,000 athletes at the National Stadium.
“If that doesn’t motivate you, what would?” said Marvin Anderson, a silver medalist in the world championship 4x100 relay.
Samantha Henry, 19, who runs for Louisiana State, said she began running when she was about 8. “It develops a competitive spirit and gets a girl ready to win at a young age,” she said.
Jamaican success is certainly not due to the quality of its training facilities. Powell, Sherone Simpson and about 50 other members of the dominant professional track club, MVP, train at the University of Technology on a grass oval track with lanes defined by a mixture of tar and diesel. They work out with outdated weight equipment in a small gym. Yet 10 of the club’s athletes have qualified for the Olympics.
Dr. Herb Elliott, who is in charge of competitors’ drug testing on the island, said, “We’re vigilant.”“We don’t get things easily, and hard work pays off,” Stewart said. “So why do it the easy way when you know a couple of years later, you’ll have to give it back” if you’re caught.
More than a dozen elite sprinters have been penalized for using performance-enhancing drugs in recent years, notably the Americans Marion Jones, who had to return five medals from the 2000 Olympics, and Justin Gatlin and Tim Montgomery, who were each at times the world’s fastest man.
The list of those barred from competing includes Jamaica-born sprinters who trained elsewhere: Ben Johnson in Canada, Linford Christie and Dwain Chambers in England, and Jerome Young and Patrick Jarrett, who were coached in the United States by another Jamaican expatriate, Trevor Graham. Ottey failed a steroid test in 1999 while training in Europe, but it was later ruled a laboratory error.
Graham, a 1988 relay silver medalist for Jamaica, started a track camp in North Carolina featuring Jones, who had passed more than 160 drug tests but finally acknowledged steroid use. In San Francisco in May, Graham was convicted on one felony count of lying to federal agents and awaits sentencing Sept. 5.
Jones is due to be released from prison in September after serving a six-month sentence for lying to federal investigators.
Two Jamaican sprinters who trained in the United States flunked steroids tests when they came home for national championships: Jarrett in 2001 and Steve Mullings, who ran for Mississippi State, in 2004.
“I caught them,” said Dr. Herb Elliott, the public health officer in charge of athletic drug testing during competitions on the island. “We’re vigilant.”
Several Jamaican stars, including Powell’s older brother, Donovan, have tested positive for stimulants.
Ellen Campbell-Grizzle, the director of the National Council on Drug Abuse, said surveys of Jamaican adults and teenagers showed “0.0000 percent” had used steroids. “We have other fish to fry,” she said.
At the same time, surely no one would be so naïve to think that there are no performance-enhancing drugs here. “It’s third world, so there is not that much availability here,” the sprinter Dwight Thomas said.
Mills, Bolt’s coach, said: “There is always the possibility of someone getting tempted, but by and large Jamaica does not have a drug culture as it pertains to sports. Some have been caught, but not when they train full time in Jamaica.”
Juliet Cuthbert, a former Jamaican Olympic sprinter, said she worked with an American coach who encouraged her to use drugs. She left him, she said, and coached herself.
Legislation for a program similar to the United States Anti-Doping Agency is expected to be put before the Jamaican cabinet this month, Dr. Patrece Freeman, the antidoping adviser to Prime Minister Bruce Golding, said.
“Sports is one of the pillars of our national development,” Elliott, the public health officer, said. “The people of this country don’t want me to hide anything.”
