Tony Becca, Consukting Editor

THE OLYMPIC Games in Beijing are over and Jamaicans are still walking on cloud nine.

With 11 medals, including six gold and three world records, victories in the men's and women's 100 and 200 metres races, and a one-two-two finish among the many great performances, Beijing undoubtedly represented the greatest perfor-mance in the history of the country's sport and the planned welcome, the celebration, is richly deserved.

In doing its thing, however, in showing its appreciation of the athletes' grand performance, the government should be careful, and it should be careful for two reasons.

Sports tourism

Although there have been many in the world of sport who have been talking about sports tourism for almost 40 years now, but for a golf tournament here and there and a tennis tournament here and there, successive governments, through the tourist board, have ignored them. It is better late than never and, hopefully, after all the talk this time around, it will now become a reality.

There is no question about it, sports and tourism, if organised and managed properly, could make Jamaica a rich little country. Where the Government should tread carefully, however, is where it concerns the call, including protest placards, to fix roads in the communities of the gold medal winners, and its promise to provide special medical assistance for the country's athletes.

While there is no question that the roads in the communities in which some of the athletes, or most of the athletes, live need fixing, and that athletes are in need of better medical and health care, there are many communities around Jamaica whose roads are in need of repair and many, many people in this country who are in need of better and proper health care.

Responsibility

It is the responsibility of this Government, of any government anywhere in the world, to make life better, as much as possible, for all the people, at least for the majority of the people, and not for a few select people, regard-less of who they may be.

In saluting the athletes and their great achievements, the Government should also remem-ber that there was life before Beijing, that there is life after Beijing and, most important, that in the bid for a better Jamaica for all, there are people, like doctors, teachers and businessmen, more important than sportsmen, sportswomen and sport.

In welcoming home the athletes from Beijing, in the celebration of our athletes in Beijing, the Government also should spare a moment for the pacesetters - for the champions of the past.

Among those who every Jamaican should raise their glasses to are champions like Arthur Wint in 1948, George Rhoden, Wint, Les Laing, Herb McKenley and Rhoden again in 1952, Don Quarrie in 1976 and to Deon Hemmings in 1996.

Also, the likes of Lennox Miller, George Kerr, Mel and Mal Spence, Bertland Cameron, Merlene Ottey, Juliet Cuthbert and Cathy Rattray. Trailblazers like Leroy 'Coco' Brown, Keith Gardner and Michael Fray, Cynthia Thompson, Hyacinth Walters, Kathleen Russell, Una Morris, Vilma Charlton, Andrea Bruce and Rosie Allwood.

Trained at home

To me, to one who expected the haul, the joy, the pride coming out of Beijing was not so much the performance of the athletes but more so the fact that the champions, almost all of them, were trained at home.

Unlike days gone by when Jamaicans were trained by United States coaches while attending US colleges and universities.

It was Jamaica through and through - from start to finish.

Apart from saying a big thank you for administrators like Herbert MacDonald, Tony Bridge and Richard Ashenheim of yesterday, Mike Fennell, Don Anderson, Teddy McCook and Howard Aris of today, plus a motivator like the late Foggy Burrowes; in saying thanks to coaches such as Glen Mills, Stephen Francis, Dennis Johnson, K.C. Graham, Pablo McNeil, Neville Myton, Fitz Coleman and Maurice Wilson, we should remember the pioneers.

And, in doing so, we also should lift our glasses to the memory of coaches like G.C. Foster and Ted Lamont.