The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

The Bahamas participated in its first Carifta Games in Trinidad in May of 1973, two months prior to independence.

Our eight athletes marched under a Crown Colony flag, the same one that star athletes Sir Durward Knowles, Tommy Robinson and B J Nottage had competed under in the past. We won a single bronze medal that year.

That seminal event lit a fire in Nottage. A sportsman to his core he was impressed not only with the idea of the Games but with his meeting with the father of Carifta, the legendary Barbadian, Sir Austin Sealy.

The next year in Jamaica, with BJ’s agitation, the Bahamas Amateur Athletics Association sent 17 athletes to Carifta and the medal count quadrupled to four – a gold and three silvers. BJ was ecstatic.

Carifta almost died the next year in Bermuda when only 76 athletes from just six countries attended, including six Bahamians. Still the medal count rose to eight – three gold, three silvers and two bronzes.

BJ was beside himself when the team returned home. He had persuaded Austin Sealy to bring the games to Nassau. Doyle Burrows brought him down to earth with one question: where?

The Queen Elizabeth Sports Centre was a third-rate stadium that needed everything from landscaping to lighting to structural repair. BJ had given his word to Austin and was determined to see it through.

Transportation was the key problem in those days and again just 76 athletes attended from eight countries. Led by a total unknown from Freeport named Ricky Moxey, the Bahamas came in second place with 27 medals - nine gold, 11 silvers and seven bronzes in front of an adoring hometown crowd.

Thus began the BJ Nottage/Austin Sealy bromance that lasted until last week when we lost this great sporting hero. Sealy called the 1976 Games the best to that point.

The Golden Girls, the dream team, Shaunae Miller-Uibo and countless others will probably never know the debt of gratitude they owe to BJ Nottage for his dogged pursuit of athletics and his failure to take no for an answer when it came to promoting the sport.

We all know him as a medical professional. But his legacy is in the sporting hall of fame both in The Bahamas and in the Caribbean. When he brought Carifta here there was no Ministry of Youth and Sports, only a desk in the Ministry of Education. BJ had a hand in bringing sports to the Cabinet table.

For his unshakeable belief in Bahamian athletes and for laying the foundation of a powerhouse athletics industry not just in Nassau but around the Family Islands, all sportsmen should drop their caps and pay a moment of tribute to BJ.

Sports fans around the country should stand in reflection but then erupt in cheers for BJ.

A tribute was paid to uber-hero Jesse Owens years ago that fits BJ to a T:

“In history, men existed who with their way of life have inspired many others to act for something better. Some used words, others actions. But all simply did not quit even when facing enormous obstacles in their way”.

Next year will mark the 47th Carifta Games and fittingly it will take place here in Nassau. Perhaps the organizers might be moved to host those games in BJ’s honour.

I don’t think Sir Austin Sealy would object. BJ was too much of a self-deprecating person to support such an idea that he would have dismissed as “foolishness”. But as BJ told Doyle Burrows in 1974, “I know it’s hard, but let’s do it anyway”.

Farewell BJ. And thank you.

THE GRADUATE

Nassau,

July 2, 2017.