We just bossed up de World Championships in Berlin today, didn't we?
Where do we start?
[caption id="attachment_1343" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Melaine Walker (centre) and teammate Kaliese Spencer react after her 400 m hurdles victory. Trinidad's bronze medallist Josanne Lucas is at right. / Photo credit: AP"]
[/caption]With golden girl and defending Olympic islandista Melaine Walker's sizzling 400m hurdles victory?
[caption id="attachment_1344" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Faster than that! The eventual time was rounded down to 19.19 seconds. / Photo credit: AP"]
Or with Usain Bolt's jaw-dropping 'yo, dat yute deh nuh normal' 19.19 second world record run in the 200m finals?
[caption id="attachment_1345" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Number one! Ryan Brathwaite celebrates his victory. / Photo credit: AP"]
Or with little Barbados finally getting its first gold medal at a major international meet, with Ryan Brathwaite's 11o metres hurdle victory?
Such an abundance of riches. We feel spoiled tonight by the amount of Caribbean medals! There has been such a gold rush today, that we all win bronze in the women's 400m hurdles, in the form of Trinidadian Josanne Lucas and nuff people ent realise.
It has been a big, big day for this little region at the World Championships.
We have said it here before and we will say it again - it is not only now Caribbean athletes have been among the greatest in the world.
It is only now the world is seeing it.
For so many years, we have seen those who were born here compete under other flags - sometimes after emigrating with their families in their youth. Sometimes after going to university overseas and deciding to compete for larger, better resourced countries.
We have seen athletes from larger countries set 'amazing' times under clouds of suspicion that seemed obvious to us but not to the powerful nations that backed them.
But now... now the playing field has been leveled a bit.
And I know every Caribbean person feels the way we do.
IT'S ABOUT TIME!!!!!
I love this post!!!
ReplyDelete[...] of the sprinter's “extraordinary world championships”, while compatriot Islandista doesn't know where to begin: Oh, what a day it has been [...]
ReplyDeletePoint of contention on the major international meet comment. Ryan's is a first at the World Games but Andrea Blackett won the gold in the 400 hurdles in the Commonwealth games 10 years ago.
ReplyDeleteyes I nitpicking ok. :-)
[...] of the sprinter’s “extraordinary world championships”, while compatriot Islandista doesn’t know where to begin: Oh, what a day it has been [...]
ReplyDeleteCongratulations to all our Caribbean athletes. They have done the region proud.
ReplyDeleteAntigua's Daniel Bakka Bailey came 4th in the 100m! Islandistas to da worrrrrrrrrrllllll
ReplyDelete