I am not normally one for sports and political pedestals but Usain Bolt, the Beijing Olympics triple gold medalist, made a fair point the other day.
I was reading a sports brief in The Daily Telegraph earlier this week and after winning some form of world sports award, Bolt had a message to send his countrymen that went a little like this: Me and my fellow athletes have done a good job and we are trying to promote Jamacia, so stop killing each other.
According to this article called "Usain Bolt offers hope to Jamaicia's troubled society" written by Jenny McAsey (heraldsun.com.au, August 22, 2008), 1500 Jamacians were murdered last year and 270 were gunned down by police.
"USAIN Bolt has revolutionised sprinting but his record-breaking deeds have an even greater power to change the crime-ridden youth culture that is threatening to destroy Jamaican society," McAsey wrote in her lead paragraph.
This was backed up by Owen Slot who wrote for the Times Online on September 9 this year, "That is the effect that the Olympics had on Jamaica. Barbara Blake Hannah, a special consultant to the Ministry of Information, Culture and Sports, said: 'Sports is one thing that holds Jamaica together. I heard that on the day of Bolt's 100 metres, no one here was killed. Even murder took a holiday for him'."
It shouldn't take an Olympic champion to stop murder but good on ya' Usain Bolt - for your incredible deeds on the track and for speaking up off it when your country was in desperate need.
2 comments:
That's quite an amazing article Josh - that people stop killing each other just because of sport. I love my sport, but if people would stop murdering each other (and let's apply this to everywhere worldwide) it'd be a much better world to live in. Imagine it - sports 365 days a year, 24 hours a day - and no one gets murdered. Sounds like an ideal world to me! Maybe because Usain was so good, enabled everyone to forget about everything else. It's not a bad thing.
A man of my own thoughts. I love it. All year round sport coming right up.
Sport is a good thing - regardless of what anyone says.
Maybe it is part of John Lennon was talking about all those years ago.
Long live sport and the world wide good it creates amoung man kind.
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