The success of the Caribbean on the world stage in athletics can be traced to programmes which began 30 to 40 years ago by the Central American and Caribbean (CAC) region as well as the founding of the CARIFTA Games.
This is the opinion of former CAC president Victor Lopez who was responding to questions regarding the recent performance of the region at the IAAF World Championships and London 2012 Olympic Games.
Lopez, who was head of the CAC grouping from 1998 to 2012, pointed out in an exclusive interview last week with SUNSPORT en route to the recently held CARIFTA Games in The Bahamas that the region was the first to not only introduce a junior championship, but to have the Under-17 and Under-20 age groups.
“That has perhaps been one of the reasons why we have developed faster than other regions in the world. The other regions in the world did the senior championships and maybe some of them a schools championship and so forth, but none of them that I know, since the early 1970s, did a regional junior or youth championship,” Lopez said.
As a result, the CARIFTA Games, which were developed by Barbadian Austin Sealy in 1972, became a model which was adopted by the IAAF, using the Under-18 and Under-20 age groups.
“CARIFTA, I think, is the No.1 junior meet apart from the World Junior Championships. It is a very unique characteristic of pulling together all of the countries from the Caribbean that have the same culture, the same customs, ethnic background and at the same time, it is a very intense competition. I call it the Olympics of the Caribbean.”
Lopez said Pan American Juniors also ranked highly because it brought together all of the juniors from North America to Argentina.
In addition, through coaching offered by the Regional Development Centre in Puerto Rico, coaches were able to learn the theory, concepts and science behind athletics and applied them to the programmes long before the IAAF was offering coaching.
“We feel that all of the different projects we started back in the late 1970s early 1980s are producing, plus our countries in the CAC have a tradition of athletes,” said the man who coached former Barbadian hurdler Andrea Blackett on the world stage.
“It’s true that the national sport is probably cricket in some islands, or football/soccer, [but] athletics is where we are excelling, so the youth are trying to emulate the top stars that we have like in Jamaica with Usain Bolt and Yohan Blake.
“If you do it right, you can have a successful life financially, so a lot of young people are following that path.”
The Central American region, which was lagging slightly behind, has also begun to produce world and Olympic medallists.
Still, Lopez noted, this was not translating into major sponsorship for the sport the way football, baseball, rugby and basketball have done.
“For some reason, we are the king sport in the Olympics, but after the Olympics at the World level, it kind of dies down in the marketing area. Our athletes still run fast and they are still producing.
“I think it is the television situation. They are not feeling our sport is attractive or dynamic enough for broadcasting, but if you make a short competition like the one-day meeting, 2½ hours of a real dynamic event, I think we could have a very successful situation,” Lopez said.
