GEORGETOWN, Guyana – Jamaica and the rest of the region are still reeling from the shocking disclosures that five Jamaican athletes, starting with the legendary Veronica Campbell-Brown and including their beloved Asafa Powell and 2004 4×100 Olympic gold medallist Sherone Simpson, have tested positive for banned substances. It is a crisis of very real proportions in Jamaica, where, as André Lowe of the Gleaner puts it, athletics has “not only replaced football and cricket as the island’s No 1 sport” but has also become “the main unifying force for Jamaicans.” The revelations may be “devastating” for Jamaicans but they are equally dispiriting for people across the Caribbean.
Who can forget the euphoria of 2008, when the region’s athletes, led by the phenomenal Usain Bolt, gave us one Olympic golden moment after another? We exulted then in the Caribbean dream of unity and world-beating excellence, starved as we were of such sporting dominance since the decline of the once mighty West Indies cricket team. And our athletes rewarded our faith again at London 2012, underlying our claim to being the best region in the world for athletics based on medals per capita.
The memories still have the power to warm the heart and lift the spirit. Now though, there is sniggering on the part of those who felt that their right to dominate had been usurped and the corrosive worm of doubt and disillusion is burrowing its way into our collective psyche.