Jamaica - The Fastest Nation

Jamaica’s population of slightly less than 3million stands 1/5th of Mumbai population. Still this tiny island nation from the Caribbean has caught the attention of the entire globe by their stellar performance in this year’s Beijing Olympics.

By the time I am writing this, they have won 4 Golds and 3 Silvers (No bronze – either 1st or 2nd or move out of the business) and rank 13 in the medal tally. (India is ranked 42 with 2 medals)
But this blog is not a comparison of their performance with India. (I am sure there are enough nations above India like Mongolia, Estonia, Azerbaizan, Kazakhastan, Belarus and my favourite Zimbabwe which I would love to do the comparison with, but lets leave that for a later date).

What intrigued me to write this was: All the medals the Jamaican team won were in one game - Athletics and that too in the main races (100/200/400m)
For people whose curiosity can only be satisfied by facts and statistics:

• Gold Usain Bolt Men's 100 m
• Gold Usain Bolt Men's 200 m
• Gold Shelly-Ann Fraser Women's 100 m
• Gold Melaine Walker Women's 400 m hurdles
• Silver Sherone Simpson Women's 100 m
• Silver Kerron Stewart Women's 100 m
• Silver Shericka Williams Women's 400 m
  

Looks like a clean sweep right?

Not just that, out of the 4 golds, 3 were won by breaking records. (Usain Bolt who turned 22 today and nicknamed by the media quite rightfully “Lightning Bolt” is the first man to break both world records at one Olympics after Carl Lewis. But his lightning performance shadowed another Olympic record breaker Jamaican Melanie Walker in the 400 m hurdles.)
Equally interesting is to note their dominance on both men and women version of the races!

Now the experts for the next few months will keep debating as to what they eat and drink, where and how they train, where they work out, etc and etc but the bottomline is the end results. They didn’t participate in many games and hence by focusing on their core strengths, the Jamaicans stand so tall in the games. Simple: Focus, Focus and Win!
All I can say is they might be way behind in many other aspects but these performances have made them “The Fastest Nation” in the world.
Hats off to the Island Nation and now the Fastest Nation - Jamaica