World’s fastest man driven by tragedy Font Size: Decrease Increase Print Page: Print
Jenny McAsey | February 21, 2008
ASAFA POWELL could hardly bring himself to phone his mother in Jamaica after he lost the 100m world championship last year.
Asafa Powell chills out to rap music while resting his injured knee in Melbourne. Picture: Michael Klein
He knew she would be crying after he panicked and came third behind American Tyson Gay in a race that had been his for the taking. As he dialled his parents’ number, the world’s fastest man felt he had let down not only the Jamaican nation, but more significantly his family.
Since two of his brothers died in quick succession in 2002 and 2003, Asafa, the youngest of William and Cislyn Powell’s six boys, has felt a deep need to bring whatever pleasure he can to his family.
“I was very sad,” Powell recalled in Melbourne this week where he is preparing for tonight’s IAAF World Tour meeting. “I was hesitant in calling them because I knew my mother was crying. She was sad for me, she was worried about how I was feeling.”
When his brothers died - Michael was murdered in a taxi in New York City and Vaughn died of heart failure on a football field in Atlanta - Asafa at first wanted to end his promising track career. Instead he turned their deaths into his motivation.
In 2005 he set his first 100m world record of 9.77sec, and last September, stung into action by his disaster in Osaka, he lowered it to 9.74sec in a race in Italy, easing up before the line.
[b]“I lost my brothers a couple of years ago and it brought a lot of sadness to the family,” Powell said. "But I recover from that and I am just out there trying to bring back some light into the family.
“(My responsibility) is to bring back happiness to my family. I think that is my job.” [/b]
Tonight in Melbourne, his task will be simply to get through his first sprint race of the year unscathed. He arrived from Jamaica 10 days ago with four stitches in a knee after he fell on the stairs at home.
He could not race in Sydney last Saturday and the will-he-won’t-he speculation has grown to soap opera proportions in the lead-up to tonight’s event.
Yesterday, after doing a series of run-throughs he was a starter - provided he gets through his final warm-up tonight.
Powell is a shy, softly spoken man but he has a killer smile and a laid-back Jamaican sense of humour. The only time he moves fast is when he is driving one of the cars he loves or is sprinting.
“He is the world’s fastest runner and the world’s slowest walker, he is always late,” his manager Paul Doyle said.
As Powell’s fame has grown, so has his charisma and ease with the public and media.
In an era of drug scandals, Powell is one of the few global stars in track and field, and his story is all the more intriguing because of his frailties. While he is the fastest human, he failed to take home the prize at the 2004 Olympics and last year’s world championships.
Unlike many Caribbean athletes, he has opted not to live and train in the US. He has a revered local coach, Stephen Francis, and wanted to stay near his parents after his brothers died.
At home, he is the number one man. “I would say I am the biggest deal in every sport there is,” he laughed.
And naturally, everyone wants to give him advice.
“Well, I think I have the most coaches in the world,” he said. "Every day as soon as I step on the street, step out of the car, someone has their own opinion.
“It is a lot of pressure to be the number one sportsperson in Jamaica and the guy who everyone is looking to for a gold medal and to put Jamaica on top. Everywhere I go in Jamaica, they say ‘make sure you win this Olympics’.”
He is a beacon for a society that is riddled with gang-related crime and has one of the highest murder rates in the world.
In 2005, nearly 1700 people were murdered in a country with a population of 2.8million. By comparison, that year in Australia 295 people were murdered out of a population of 20m.
Even though Powell is wealthy, he never feels threatened in Jamaica and is in fact adored by the gangs.
“I don’t really know them but they are my friends,” he laughed. "Whenever I go anywhere, they come up to me, they are the ones who really show the most love and most respect towards me.
“In 2004, during the Olympic Games, they had less crime in the country because they were watching.”
Both his parents are reverends in a Christian church and Powell had a strict upbringing. Now he wants to set up programs to help the youth of Jamaica.
“That is in the making. It is the next thing I want to do because it is very disturbing to see most of the kids on the street who have nowhere to go,” he said.
Story ToolsShare This Article Email To A Friend Share This ArticleFrom here you can use the Social Web links to save World’s fastest man driven by tragedy to a social bookmarking site.
del.icio.us Digg it Furl Netscape Yahoo MyWeb StumbleUpon Google Technorati BlinkList Newsvine ma.gnolia reddit Windows Live Tailrank Slashdot Email To A Friend* Required fields
Recipient’s Name:* Required Recipient’s Email:* Required Your Name:* Required Your Email:* Required Email Format:* HTML Text Only Your Comments:* Required
Information provided on this page will not be used for any other purpose than to notify the recipient of the article you have chosen.