Word: jamaicans
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...Bolt's Aunt Lilly agrees: "This gives Jamaicans a new picture to hold in their hands and look at for a moment and say to themselves, you know, we can do better." Says Ivor Conolley, who owns The Last Resort, a bed-and-breakfast inn near Lilly's restaurant in Trelawny, "The whole country feels right now as if good things are happening to us for a change." In cities like Kingston, in fact, seemingly everyone is wearing yellow, the color of Jamaica's athletic uniform, to work and draping the national flag on their cars, says Beckford. She hopes...
...Jamaican athletes are in a better position to have that kind of effect than Shelly-Ann Fraser, who won the women's 100 meters last weekend, the first gold for her country in that event. (She was followed in second and third place by fellow Jamaicans Sherone Simpson and Kerron Stewart.) To international track-and-field enthusiasts, Fraser, 21, seemed to emerge from nowhere; but to Jamaicans, she's the girl who used to train barefooted in her home neighborhood of Waterhouse, a particularly tough ghetto on the outskirts of Kingston. One of the first things she did after...
...Relying on athletes to galvanize social and economic improvement is always a risky proposition, especially in developing countries. But the Fraser family offers the kind of grassroots anti-crime publicity the Jamaican government needs more of, says Mark Shields, deputy federal police commissioner. "It has a positive effect on bringing the crime rate down. This is a great opportunity to sell Jamaica in the positive light it deserves...
...What's more, while star Jamaican runners used to go abroad to train and study, most now opt to stay home, further endearing them to their countrymen. Bolt and Fraser, for example, eschewed lucrative U.S. college scholarship opportunities to attend the University of Technology in Kingston. Jamaican sports officials insist having the athletes on native soil has also led to a far lower incidence of the kind of doping scandals that have bedeviled Jamaican-born sprinters in the past. Bolt even made a point earlier this summer of letting it be known he'd sworn off partying to better prepare...
...Still, despite the clean record of the latest generation of sprinters, Jamaica has had to contend with a cloud of suspicion because its testing regimen is considered less than stringent. Jamaican health officials insist they're on a vigilant watch for performance enhancing drugs, and in recent years they have nabbed a few cheaters, including two who'd been training at U.S. universities. But while groups like the World Anti-Doping Agency have conceded there is little proof of drug-use among Jamaican sprinters, the country has refused to join the Caribbean Regional Anti-Doping Organization, which would...