I'm a big fan of Usain Bolt - American actress

She's got many Jamaican fans, but actress Victoria Rowell, known to many locally as Drucilla Winters in the CBS soap opera The Young and the Restless says she's a big fan of Jamaican track and field star Usain Bolt.

"He's amazing. He's like a gazelle. I've never met him. I hope I meet him one day," Rowell, who was a guest at the launch of the RJR Sports Foundation Sportsman and Sportswoman of the Year Awards ceremony at the Jamaica Pegasus hotel yesterday, told The Gleaner.

"I'm a ballet dancer and he (Bolt) moves like a ballet dancer to me. It's so graceful," she added.

Rowell, a former member of the American Ballet Company, said she was an athlete as a child and still considers herself an athlete.

"Ballet is very athletic. Some people are able to make the connection between classical ballet, which you must be an athlete to be a classical ballet dancer," she added.

Rowell, who has biological Jamaican roots seemed very au fait with Jamaican sport.

"I've read about Usain Bolt because as an athlete, I'm curious beyond the Jamaican yam, which I don't dispel at all, but there's something in the soil, I'm convinced, that makes the Jamaican female and male

athletes, and now we're at the advent of this incredible win by Alia (Atkinson). It's breathtaking to watch," she said.

Rowell, who is in the island for the screening of two film productions set for tomorrow, said the endorsement of American prima ballerina Misty Copeland by sports clothing manufacturers Under Armour was also a big endorsement for dancers as athletes.

"It just made me so proud that she was able to bridge not only the classical arts world but also sports, and being an athlete as a ballet dancer," she said.