The competition is one part of a broader framework - track and field is huge at every educational level, with periodic regional meets drawing athletes of all ages from the most remote rural areas. Jamaica is perhaps the only country in the world where a track and field meet is the premier sporting event.īut it’s not just Champs. Officially called the Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association Boys and Girls Athletics Championship, Champs is an annual competition attended by 30,000 wildly enthusiastic fans. Nor can genetics explain why Jamaicans outperform other blacks in the Americas, especially in Brazil, which has 36 times as many of them.Īsk a Jamaican like me (I was born and raised there), and we’ll give you a very different answer: Champs. A vast majority of Jamaicans’ ancestors are from West Africa, which has relatively few outstanding sprinters. How do Jamaicans do it? It’s not because of genetics, as some claim. By the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, it was first in sprints, with Usain Bolt winning three gold medals, and an unprecedented clean sweep of the women’s 100 meters. At the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, Jamaica was ranked 13th by the International Olympic Committee. Jamaica’s global dominance is broad and deep, both male and female, and started to emerge over half a century ago. Nineteen of the 26 fastest times ever recorded in 100 meter races were by Jamaicans. Currently, the world’s fastest man and woman are both Jamaicans. Among the most enigmatic features of Jamaica, an island of only 2.8 million people, is its astonishing supremacy in running.
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