Hubert Lawrence | Nothing is impossible with good baton changes

Fans snort at the notion that the Jamaica men’s 4x100m team could go really fast in Doha at the World Championships. Consistent with the perceived doom and gloom that has hovered over us since the incomparable Usain Bolt retired, conventional wisdom posits that Jamaica has no sprinters. Boom! On Sunday, a German team with no big names threw down a big time.

Running in Berlin, Lisa Kwayie, Yasmin Kwadwo, Tatjana Pinto and Gina Luckenkemper put themselves in the World Championships women’s 4x100m medal picture with a crisp world-leading time of 41.67 seconds. Their seasonal bests in the 100 metres will shock those who think burning individual speed is all you need for fast relay running. Kwayie, Kwadwo, Pinto and Luckenkemper have run the flat event in 11.22, 11.25, 11.09 and 11.14 seconds, respectively.

If they qualified to wear black-green-and-gold, that 41.67 would be the seventh fastest Jamaican time in history. The ‘displaced’ mark – 41.70 seconds – was set at the 2011 World Championships by Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, Kerron Stewart, Sherone Simpson and Veronica Campbell-Brown. In 2011, their best times were 10.95, 10.87, 11.00 and 10.76 seconds, respectively.

The comparison speaks for itself.

The truth is that great baton passing can transform quartets with modest individual credentials into championship contenders. That’s why we can applaud the efforts to get our 4x100m teams into warm-up races. However, while the women have had a couple of races since the National Senior Championships in June, the men haven’t done much. A team did run at the Pan-American Games but without Yohan Blake and Tyquendo Tracey, 1-2 in the National 100m, not too much would have been gleaned about the unit that will run in Doha.

By contrast, the German women are showing the benefit of practice races. A week before Zurich, they ran 42.22 seconds. If they improve anymore, they might be challengers in Doha.

BOLT NEEDED

When England beat Jamaica into third in the men’s 4x100-metre relay at the Commonwealth Games, former World Indoor 60-metre champion Richard Kilty voiced the sentiment that apparently most of us believe.

“They need him (Bolt) to beat us now!” said Kilty in an interview with the English track and field magazine Athletics Weekly.

As evidence, the English third leg runner recalled that the Tall Man came from behind to give Jamaica the Commonwealth gold medal in 2014 when the Games were in Scotland.

“Last time in Glasgow, we gave the baton ahead of him, they can’t handle us without him!”

Doha will see fine teams from the USA and Canada trying to unseat Britain as the world champion. After wins at the IAAF World Relays in Yokohama and the Pan-Am Games, Brazil will be a medal contender too. Some fans seem to have given up the ghost already, ignoring the old Jamaican proverb – ‘whe nun dead nuh dun fah’.

Blake, Tracey, Rasheed Dwyer and Seno-J Givans produced 2019 bests of 9.96, 10.00, 10.10 and 10.13 seconds to punch their tickets to Doha at the Nationals. That’s two big steps faster, 40.19 to 40.41, than the British team that zipped to gold in 37.47 seconds. Not only were they inferior than the dominant Jamaican teams of the recent past, but they were slower than the team we have now.

There is one crucial difference. Great Britain accepted the speed deficit and worked the baton to a tee. The Britons accepted one more thing: they didn’t have Bolt. We no longer have him either. Until that sinks in, we won’t really get moving.

Hubert Lawrence is an experienced sports commentator and track and field analyst. He has made notes at trackside since 1980.