Pusey, Tate honoured at Jamalco meet

Two-time Olympic sprinters Jackie Pusey and Ethlyn Tate were honoured for their athletic accomplishments at last Saturday’s JAAA/Jamalco Development Meet at Halse Hall. Afterwards, though Pusey and Tate each have praiseworthy individual achievements, they both placed burning relay anchor legs at the top of their list of treasured memories.

Celebrated alongside Tate and swimmer Belinda Phillips by the meet organisers, the Jamaica Olympic Association and the Olympians Association of Jamaica, Pusey was the spearhead of a rising St Mary High School track and field programme in the 1970s. After running 23 flat for 200 metres in Europe at age 15, she became the 4x100m anchor leg not just for St Mary High but for the Jamaican Olympic team.

In addition to rewriting the Girls’ Championship record books in Class 2, she produced unforgettable anchors in 1976 and 1977. Fifteen metres down at the change, Pusey mowed the lead down to the width of a vest. That narrow loss laid the foundation for a successful run in 1977.

“Actually, when I was running that race, I felt like my feet didn’t touch the ground, I didn’t feel the ground underneath me. It was like I was floating above the ground and I didn’t hear anything. I didn’t hear the stadium. I didn’t hear anybody in the stadium until I finished running the race,” Pusey said on Saturday.

She reached the 1976 Olympic 200m semi-finals and helped Jamaica reach the 4x100 final for the first time. While at California State Los Angeles, she raced in the 1980 Olympics as Jamaica was again a 4x100m finalist.

HISTORIC BRONZE

Brilliant in 1981, Pusey won the US college 400m title and despite a bout of pink eye and the last-­minute loss of her custom-built spikes, she placed third at the IAAF World Cup. She ended her track career with a historic bronze in the relay at the 1983 World Championship in Helsinki.

Tate, winner of three straight Girls’ Championship sprint double at Vere Technical High School and Conference titles for Morgan State University, pinpointed the 1986 NCAA 4x100m final. Morgan State nearly made a fatal mistake at the last exchange. “Everybody was gone,” she recalled, “and for me to get the baton from Wendy Vereen and run down everybody except the person that was leading and we took second, that was a moment to remember.”

An earlier bit of heroics came at the 1983 Western Relays at Cornwall College when one of her Vere Class Two 4x100 ­teammates fell.

“I looked at her get up and I said ‘wow, I have to run’, and I just turned around and took the baton from her, everybody was gone and me running them down and everybody making all that noise, ‘she coming, she coming, she coming’”, she remembered. It was a glimpse of the speed that gave her a Class Two 100 metres record of 11.4 seconds at Girls’ Championships later that season.

In 1988, she helped Jamaica to reach the Olympic 4x100m final.