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JAMAICA’S
GREATS
FROZEN
IN MOTION
From top left going
anti-clockwise:
“The Jamaican Athlete” in aluminium, and Donald Quarrie, Merlene Ottey, Herb McKenley in bronze. Above right are all three in a row before the November 2009 arrival of McKenley.
Photos by DPalmer
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Statues Depict Speed of Island's Trail Blazers
WHEN it comes to honoring its star athletes, Jamaica has a way of doing 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 at 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.
The 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 is 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 on 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 later renamed Jamaica Athletics Administrative 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 Olympic or World Championship 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.
FORMER TOP-RANKING OLYMPIANS FORM 'WALL OF HONOR'
There is no statue of George Rhoden (below right) at Independence Park, even though he was a successful long-sprinter during the late 1940s and early 1950s, and won two Olympic gold medals in 1952. However, he is one of the island's trail-blazers in the mural that forms a wall of honor near the main entrance to the National Stadium.
On August 22, 1950 in Sweden, Rhoden set a new world record in the 400m of 45.8 secs. He also won the AAU Championships in 400m from 1949 to 1951 and, as a Morgan State University student, won the NCAA championships in 220 yds. (200m) in 1951 and in 440yds. (400m) from 1950 to 1952.
At the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki, Rhoden was a pre-race 400m favorite as a world record holder in the 400m. He beat McKenley, who finished second in the 1948 Olympic 400m. As the anchor runner of the Jamaican relay team, Rhoden added a second Olympic gold, edging out the US by a tenth of a second, and setting a new world record (3:03.9). Deon Hemmings (above, second left), was the first Jamaican woman to win Olympic gold when she took the 400m hurdles at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, setting the Games record which stood until 2004. She also won two silver medals at the 2000 Olympics in the 400m hurdles and 4x400m relay, silver at the 1994 Commonwealth Games, bronze at the 1995 World Athletics Championships, silver at the 1997 World Athletics Championships and bronze at the 1999 World Athletics Championships, all in the 400m hurdles. She retired in 2003. All photos by Desmond G. Palmer