When it comes to honoring its star athletes, Jamaica has a way to do it with bold statements. It showers them with praise, bestows them with national honors that carry titles before their names, designates them sporting ambassadors or ambassadors-at-large and show them off in motorcades. But the island also has a much less common but iconic way of recognizing their great achievements: monuments that depict the honorees in frozen motion, installed on the grounds where their journey began.
Just outside, and directly in front of the National Stadium at Independence Park in Kingston, the main venue for Jamaica’s track and field events, are four statues that pay tribute to the country’s track athletes dating to the 1940s.
First to be erected was the enormous sculpture of a runner leaving the blocks. Identified as “The Jamaican Athlete”, it’s a representation of the athletes who formed Jamaica’s mile relay gold-medal-winning team at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki.
Weighing more than 7000 lbs. and cast in aluminium, the metal that’s produced from bauxite ore found in Jamaican soil, the imposing piece by Alvin Marriott is anchored to a marble base. The work was inspired by Arthur Wint, winner of Jamaica's first Olympic gold medal in 1948, and the three quarter-milers (Leslie Laing, Herb McKenley, George Rhoden) who teamed up with Wint in Helsinki four years later for that relay gold. The idea was conceived by Herbert G. McDonald and the aluminum was donated by the bauxite company, Alcan Jamaica Ltd. “The Jamaican Athlete” was unveiled by Her Royal Highness Princess Margaret of England.
In 1978, the bronze statue of a high-stepping Donald Quarrie, (again by Alvin Marriott), was erected at the Park and was later relocated and rededicated Nov. 28, 2005. Quarrie was one of the world's top sprinters of his time, making the Jamaican 100m team for the 1968 Summer Olympics as an 18-year-old, before winning medals of all colors at three other Olympics (1976, 1980, 1984). He also owns a stack of Pan American and Commonwealth Games gold medals. Quarrie, who has been successful as a sprint coach, is now a member of the JAAA (Jamaica Amateur Athletics Association) management team.
Next in line was an 8-foot, 700-lb. representation of Jamaica’s perennial sprinter Merlene Ottey reaching for victory at the tape, which was unveiled December 28, 2005. A seven-time Olympian, Ottey first represented Jamaica at the Moscow Olympics in 1980, when she was 20 years old, and took the 200m bronze medal.
As the oldest world athletics track medalist ever, Ottey anchored Jamaica's 4x100m team to Olympic silver in 2000. She remains the most decorated woman in Olympics or World Championships track and field with nine and 14 medals, respectively, among her 35 major championship medals. She stopped running for her native Jamaica to represent Slovenia, her adopted country, in 2004.
The latest sculpture to have joined the illustrious lineup at the Stadium was that of track legend Herb McKenley who died November 26, 2007 at 85. Sculpted in bronze by Basil Watson and titled “Beyond The Tape”, the striding-through-the-finish-line work was unveiled November 25, 2009.
McKenley won four Olympic medals including three individual silver medals between 1948 and 1952. His Olympic Gold medal was achieved in 1952, when he produced one of the greatest relay legs of all time to propel Jamaica to a 4x400m relay victory in world record time.
At various times, McKenley held the world record for the 300 yards, 400 yards and 400m races and is the only person to have reached the finals of the Olympic 100m, 200m and 400m races.
He spent many years as a coach developing the talents of young athletes, and served for a long time as a sports administrator and president of the (JAAA) Jamaica Amateur Athletic Association.