Stephen Francis and the Success of the Jamaican Sprinters

Last weekend, I was watching both the women's and men's track teams from Jamaica win the 4 x 100 M relays at the Track and Field World Championships in China. Given the success of the Jamaican sprinters over the past 10 years from such a small country, I wanted to find out what has contributed to the success of these Jamaican athletes.

In a book entitled "The Gold Mine Effect: Crack The Secrets Of High Performance", author Rasmus Ankersen interviewed Stephen Francis who had helped establish the MVP Track and Field Track Club in Kingston, Jamaica in 1999. Francis told Ankersen that he believed that the Jamaican athletes should remain in their home country to train instead of going to the United States. Even though Jamaica didn't have the finances and training facilities of the U.S., Francis thought that he could develop successful sprinters at the international level.

Francis talked about what he would look for in a potential athlete to train and coach. He was looking for athletes who had a compelling story to compete and succeed. Francis stated that he wanted to know the personal stories of these athletes. He wanted to know what they were all about and how they had become who they were. Also, he was looking for athletes who had a strong desire to learn, using what they learned to get better, and then keep on learning.

For Francis, the success of these sprinters depended a lot on their mindset and motivation. He wanted athletes who had passion and perseverance to compete and succeed. And he wanted athletes who were never satisfied with their current performance, and continuously wanted to get better.

Francis believed that the ability to succeed was indicated by an athlete's passion and hunger to be better today than he or she was yesterday. He wanted to work with athletes with "cunning and resilience", and were able to bounce back from adversity.