By BRENT STUBBS
Senior Sports Reporter
bstubbs@tribunemedia.net
TEAM USA is in town and their mission is a simple one: to reestablish their dominance of the relays at the inaugural International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) World Relays Bahamas 2014.
A total of 55 athletes were arriving all day yesterday to compete in the relays this weekend at the newly refurbished Thomas A Robinson National Stadium as they will compete in all five events in both the men’s and women’s 4 x 100, 4 x 200, 4 x 400, 4 x 800 and 4 x 1500 metre relays.
In recent times, the USA has had its share of problems, losing to teams from Jamaica in both the men’s and women’s 4 x 100m and the Bahamas in the men’s 4 x 400. The latest feat came at the Penn Relays where the Bahamas’ duo of Chris ‘Fireman’ Brown and Ramon Miller took advantage of a huge mistake by Americans David Verburg and Manteo Mitchell on the final exchange.
In one of the two victories, the Bahamas went on to spoil the Americans’ bid to complete a clean sweep of all of the titles in the showdown dubbed ‘USA vs the World’ elite relays. The other members of the Bahamas’ team were Michael Mathieu and Demetrius Pinder, the same quartet that snatched the gold from the United States at the 2014 Olympic Games in London, England.
Without Pinder, the Bahamas failed to advance to the final of the IAAF World Indoor Championships in Sopot, Poland where the United States easily secured the title with a world record feat. They also posted the victory in the women’s race.
The other victory at Penn Relays came from the Jamaicans in the women’s 4 x 100m. The USA, however, triumphed over the Jamaicans in the men’s 4 x 100 and the women’s 4 x 400 relays to help set the stage for this weekend.
Strength for USA
The Americans are coming in with two solid squads in both the men’s and women’s 4x400m relays. Clayton Parros, who ran in Poland, will be a part of the men’s 4 x 400 pool that also features three members of the world championship team in McQuay, LaShawn Merritt and David Verburg.
When you add Christian Taylor, who has shown tremendous success as he moved from the field as an Olympic triple jump champion, the USA is making sure that they come as loaded as can be. Talking about being loaded, the Americans have a lot of ammunition on the ladies’ 4 x 400. They are solid with Olympic gold medallists Sanya Richards-Ross, Natasha Hastings and Dee Dee Trotter as well as two-time World medallists Joanna Atkins, Jessica Beard and Monica Hargrove.
Both of the USA’s 4 x 100 and 4 x 200 teams will have their hands full with the Jamaicans and the Europeans. Their 4 x 800 and 4 x 1500 teams will have to contend with the Africans. But the fact that they are here is reason for concern. The Americans are in it for the overall haul.
Here’s a look at the athletes named to Team USA
MEN
4x100m: Marvin Bracy, Trell Kimmons, Calesio Newman, Mike Rodgers, Mookie Salaam, Charles Silmon
4x200m: Walter Dix, Curtis Mitchell, Maurice Mitchell, Wallace Spearmon
4x400m: Torrin Lawrence, Tony McQuay, LaShawn Merritt, Clayton Parros, Christian Taylor, David Verburg
4x800m: Robby Andrews, Brandon Johnson, Michael Rutt, Duane Solomon, Mark Wieczorek
4x1500m: Pat Casey, Garrett Heath, Will Leer, Leo Manzano, David Torrence
WOMEN
4x100m: Alexandria Anderson, Tianna Bartoletta, Lakeisha Lawson, Barbara Pierre, Stacey-Ann Smith
4x200m: Tori Bowie, Paris Daniels, Kimberlyn Duncan, Bianca Knight, Tawanna Meadows, Shalonda Solomon, Jeneba Tarmoh
4x400m: Joanna Atkins, Jessica Beard, Monica Hargrove, Natasha Hastings, Sanya Richards-Ross, Dee Dee Trotter
4x800m: Geena Gall-Lara, Charlene Lipsey, Brenda Martinez, Chanelle Price, Ajee Wilson
4x1500m: Kate Grace, Heather Kampf, Katie Mackey, Morgan Uceny, Sara Vaughn
Comments
242orgetslu 9 years, 11 months ago
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Across the inky-blue Gulf Stream from Florida, near the sheer edge of the Great Bahama Bank, a new island is emerging from the sea. Although it bears the appealing name Ocean Cay, this new island is not, and never will be, a palm-fringed paradise of the sort the Bahamian government promotes in travel ads. No brace of love doves would ever choose Ocean Cay for a honeymoon; no beauty in a brief bikini would waste her sweetness on such desert air. Of all the 3,000 islands and islets and cays in the Bahamas, Ocean Cay is the least lovely. It is a flat, roughly rectangular island which, when completed, will be 200 acres and will resemble a barren swatch of the Sahara. Ocean Cay does not need allure. It is being dredged up from the seabed by the Dillingham Corporation of Hawaii for an explicit purpose that will surely repel more tourists than it will attract. In simplest terms, Ocean Cay is a big sandpile on which the Dillingham Corporation will pile more sand that it will subsequently sell on the U.S. mainland. The sand that Dillingham is dredging is a specific form of calcium carbonate called aragonite, which is used primarily in the manufacture of cement and as a soil neutralizer. For the past 5,000 years or so, with the flood of the tide, waters from the deep have moved over the Bahamian shallows, usually warming them in the process so that some of the calcium carbonate in solution precipitated out. As a consequence, today along edges of the Great Bahama Bank there are broad drifts, long bars and curving barchans of pure aragonite. Limestone, the prime source of calcium carbonate, must be quarried, crushed and recrushed, and in some instances refined before it can be utilized. By contrast, the aragonite of the Bahamian shallows is loose and shifty stuff, easily sucked up by a hydraulic dredge from a depth of one or two fathoms. The largest granules in the Bahamian drifts are little more than a millimeter in diameter. Because of its fineness and purity, the Bahamian aragonite can be used, agriculturally or industrially, without much fuss and bother. It is a unique endowment. There are similar aragonite drifts scattered here and there in the warm shallows of the world, but nowhere as abundantly as in the Bahamas. In exchange for royalties, the Dillingham Corporation has exclusive rights in four Bahamian areas totaling 8,235 square miles. In these areas there are about four billion cubic yards—roughly 7.5 billion long tons—of aragonite. At rock-bottom price the whole deposit is worth more than $15 billion. An experienced dredging company like Dillingham should be able to suck up 10 million tons a year, which will net the Bahamian government an annual royalty of about $600,000.
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