Olympic and World 100-metre silver-medal winner Kerron Stewart, says she might go down in history as the sprinter who ran 10.75 seconds without winning a gold medal. Stewart, who retired at the end of the 2018 athletics season, made this insight during a December 11 interview with British track and field journal Athletics Weekly.
"In 2008-09, I believed that I was the fastest woman alive, but there were times when other competitors proved me wrong," she told writer Stewart Weir. "But I never doubted in my heart that I was the best, and that is what I will always hold on to."
A star at John Mills All-Age School and St Jago High, Stewart zoomed forward at Auburn University and in 2007 made the 100-metre final at the World Championships. She won the 100 at the 2008 Jamaica Championships in 10.80 seconds over the surprising Shelly-Ann Fraser, Sherone Simpson and Veronica Campbell.
Reflecting on her personal best time, she said, "I suppose I might go down in the records as the person who ran 10.75 without winning a global gold medal, and that just shows the level of the competition, the level of women, in the sport."
Second to Fraser in the Olympics, she twice clocked 10.75 in 2009, once before the World Championships in Rome and again in the World 100m final, with Fraser ahead by 0.02 seconds.
Stewart was no one-trick pony. She took the bronze in the 200m at the 2008 Olympics and battered the 11-second barrier 26 times.
"What a time to be Jamaican!" said Stewart, who was a fixture on the national team for more than a decade. "It is something I always hold on to and look at with so much pride," she said of the period where Jamaica dominated world sprinting.
"I might never see it again in my lifetime, but if it does, that's okay, because it was part of history, and that can never be taken away and can never be replaced."
Now 34, Stewart, now retired, is looking to get into coaching.
"I want to coach. I want to teach kids that their identity is not just wrapped up in what they can do. You are greater than what you do," said Stewart. "The moment you realise you were created in God's image, there is nothing that you cannot do, there is nothing you cannot conquer.
"I want people to find their purpose and live their purpose."