Chemistry most important for 4x100 record –AleenBailey
*Events listed in Jamaica time
7:40 p.m. - Women’s 4x100m Relay Heats
- Jamaica (Heat 1, lane 8)
8:05 p.m. - Men’s 4x100m Relay Heats
- Jamaica (Heat 2, lane 8)
8:35 p.m. - Women’s 800m Semi-Final
- Adelle Tracey (Heat 1, lane 8) - Natoya Goule (Heat 2, lane 3)
9:15 p.m.- Women’s 400m Final
- Stephenie Ann McPherson (Lane 2)
- Candice McLeod (Lane 5)
9:35 p.m. - Men’s 400m Final - Christopher Taylor (Lane 1)
9:50 p.m. - Women’s 400m Hurdles Final
- Rushell Clayton (Lane 2)
Relays have provided some of the most iconic moments in Jamaica’s track and field history – a stunning world record triumph by the legendary Helsinki quartet in the 1952 Olympic 4x400 final, Merlene Ottey’s searing anchor in the 1991 World Championships sprint relay, and the first sub-37 second clocking in London by Nesta Carter, Michael Frater, Yohan Blake and Usain Bolt 10 years ago. World and Olympic 4x100 gold medallist Aleen Bailey says another big moment could be in the making.
Jamaica won the 2021 Olympic Women’s 4x100m relay in a national record time of 41.02 seconds and Bailey says this year’s team could challenge the world record of 40.82 seconds at the World Athletics Championships in Eugene, Oregon.
“It’s not baton pass and it’s not speed,” she said. “It’s if the chemistry is right. The chemistry has to be right.”
Asked to explain, Bailey said, “We have to be one unit and we have to be friends and not think of self, and we have to work as a team and as a unit, and where somebody falls off, somebody else catches up. This thing is with the two teams that I was on, everybody was willing to work, to be placed where it fits you. There was no ego or ‘I’m this so I have to go here.’”
She used the male teams led by Bolt as examples.
“The reason why the Jamaican men’s 4x100 always won is the chemistry. They’re like siblings. They’re like brothers”, she recounted of a period when Jamaica was invincible in the men’s 4x100m.
Carter, Frater, Bolt and Asafa Powell crossed the line first at the 2008 Olympics and took the gold medal in the 2009 World Championships. “One year,” she remembered, “Asafa wasn’t on the team and I think somebody else replaced Asafa, once you come in, you become a part of the brotherhood.”
When injury took Powell out of the reckoning, Carter, Frater, Blake and Bolt set world records of 37.04 and 36.84 seconds, respectively, at the 2011 World Championships and the 2012 Olympics.
In 2013, Carter, Kemar BaileyCole, Nickel Ashmeade, and Bolt streeted the field in the World Championships, with Carter, Powell, Ashmeade and Bolt winning at the 2015 Worlds.
The final win in this dominant era came at the 2016 Olympics where Powell, Blake, Ashmeade and Bolt stepped 37.27 seconds to take the gold medals.
Stressing the willingness of those men to do what was beneficial to the team, she said, “Bolt was the fastest man and everybody said why is he not running anchor leg, because he fit better where he is because he didn’t always run the anchor leg until Yohan came and Yohan was as capable as him to run a really good curve.
“So as a unit, you have to put the team together not based on who is this, or who is that. It’s who fits there and the chemistry has to be unmatched.”
The first round of the relay is set for today with the Women’s 4x100m at 7:40 p.m. Jamaica time, and the men’s equivalent at 8:05 p.m.