Celebrating our athletes

As the euphoria over "Jamaica's" performance at the Beijing games continues, it is ironic that there continues to be crises in the education system, this time regarding the financing of our schools. Jamaican athletics is nurtured at the school level, in particular the secondary school level, where the infrastructure for coaching and competition is extensive. However, this infrastructure takes place largely as a result of volunteer effort - even the highly vaunted Boys and Girls Champs are run by the Inter Secondary School Association (ISSA).

Following is Marguerite's open letter which appears in today's Gleaner newspaper:

The Editor Sir,

Celebrating our athletes!

I am elated at the performance of our athletes in Beijing – all of them, every single one and of course the medal winners! I am very aware however that their success is the result of their own amazing, relentless and dedicated hard work and sacrifice with very little support from the state. Most of them have come through the secondary school system, in which the track and field programs are powered to a large extent by volunteer effort. It is ironic that while “products of our educational system” are excelling in Beijing, we cannot even find the will to properly finance our schools.

How can we as a nation honour these athletes? Celebrations and even a public holiday are being mooted. May I suggest that the government contribute the money they plan to spend on celebrations instead to the track programmes in the athletes’ alma maters in their names? This would be a long lasting, fitting and appropriate salute to them. This is not to say that there should be no public celebrations for them – let’s just not go overboard spending money that we say we do not have!

As regards the public holiday – considering the gruelling work these athletes have put in, including sacrificing many a public holiday, may I suggest that we do not go this route? What we ought to be doing now is buckling down and trying to make Jamaica not just the sprint capital of the world, but the capital of the world in all spheres!

Sincerely

Marguerite Orane