Jamaican Athletics: A Model for 2012 and the World

This book celebrates Jamaica's high quality performances in global athletics over the past sixty years, as made evident most recently by Usain Bolt's dramatic gold wins in the Beijing Olympics. This is an achievement that is wholly disproportionate to Jamaica's size and resources. The book seeks to isolate the environment in which the athletic product of excellence thrives. It asserts that the environment consists of the rich legacy and history of athletics in Jamaica, the innate competitive, assertive and resilient spirit that is native to Jamaicans, the immense athletic talent that abounds in the country, and, most important, the systematic and structural features that underpin the junior and senior athletic programmes. The book offers an explanation and analysis of the athletic system, praising, in particular, the quality of the coaching, and the intensity of the training regimen in the junior programme, which, it argues, is the best in the world. It is suggested that the Jamaican product is a model for the world, particularly developing countries, because it illustrates how success in athletics can be achieved at the global level with relatively little resources. Attention is paid to the features of the athletic system that may be readily replicated in other countries.