The Tribune

By RICARDO MILLER

rwells@tribunemedia.net

IT’S hard not to look at the success of Team Jamaica at this weekend’s IAAF World Relays - held here in The Bahamas at the Thomas A Robinson stadium - and not ask what more Team Bahamas can do to catch-up with the skill and talent of its regional counterpart.

With the likes of Shaunae Miller-Uibo, Steven Gardiner, Anthonique Strachan and Michael Mathieu, all of whom impressed fans with their performances on Saturday night - Team Bahamas does indeed have a bright future with several medals virtually guaranteed among these athletes barring injuries.

With that said, the separation between Team Bahamas and Team Jamaica exists not with the top-level talent, but instead with the complement of athletes that round out the rosters for both countries.

When casual fans consider Team Jamaica, the likes of Elaine Thompson, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, Veronica Campbell-Brown, Usain Bolt, Yohan Blake and Osafa Powell are all names that quickly come to mind.

However, beyond these stars there are a host of well-trained, budding stars like Olympic 400m bronze medallist Shericka Jackson, Shashalee Forbes, Jura Levy to the host of upcoming male sprinters, all the way down to Brianna Lyston, a female phenomenon dominating the junior ranks.

Meanwhile, on Team Bahamas, there is a major separation between the cream of the crop and the larger pool of ageing wonders of yesteryear and collegiate athletes benefitting from four-year scholarships.

To be frank, despite the best efforts of organisers and officials here, the crop of talent being cultivated in The Bahamas just hasn’t yielded a host of world-class athletes in the track and field discipline.

Honestly, watching the ladies’ 4x100m relay team struggle Saturday made me wonder – would it have been better not to have fielded a unit for this event?

After all, that race in particular stood as a microcosm for Team Bahamas.

With Shaunae Miller-Uibo opening up the event with what many reporters in attendance called an “outstanding opening leg”, followed by an equally as impressive second leg by Anthonique Strachan, the questions quickly moved to whether or not the talent drop off between that second leg and third leg would ultimately hamper team Bahamas’ chances – it did.

No disrespect intended to the career and achievements of Christine Amertil but there is no way, at this stage of her career, that the pressures of maintaining a world-class time and running an ‘important leg’ should fall on her shoulders.

To compound matters further, the anchor leg of Saturday’s race was handled by rookie Rashan Brown, resulting in Team Bahamas finishing fourth in its heat, 11th overall and out of the final.

Like I said, there remains a major separation between the cream of the crop – Shaunae and Anthonique - and the larger pool of ageing wonders of yesteryear and collegiate athletes looking to benefit from four-year scholarships.

But the writing has been on the wall for a while now. We, instead of pooling resources into improving our crop of athletes by providing them with world-class training facilities and programmes, opted to enjoy and relish in the successes of the ones that made it big.

When I consider moments like this weekend’s event, I am forced to pin the successes and/or failures to lack of a national body dedicated to the sole development and expansion of our track and field product.

In my opinion, this is the missing link and it needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.

The championships concluded last night with the much anticipated mixed 4 x 400m - the quartet of Shaunae, Michael, Anthonique and Stevie stole the show – go figure.

• Fourth Quarter Press appears every Monday in Tribune Sports – comments and responses to rwells@tribunemedia.net