With Usain Bolt and his fellow sprinters setting the tracks ablaze at the Beijing Olympics, one would have expected the Jamaicans to roll out their next line of turbochargers at the Commonwealth Youth Games.

However, the Jamaican contingent has arrived with a couple of shuttlers, a few paddlers, a boxer and a middle-distance runner. Seventeen-year-old Kemoy Campbell will be doing the honours for his country on the athletics track, albeit at a much slower pace in his pet event, the 1,500 metres.

‘The season’s over for our top-class runners, that’s why they aren’t here,” explained Campbell as a matter of fact. The unassuming lad hopes he does his country proud like Bolt. But one thing that Campbell will not be attempting is the show-boating of his hero. “Bolt dances and maybe that’s how he keeps himself calm. I don’t dance and I like to sit and analyse things,” says the youngster, who notched up a second place in the 1,500m at the New York invitational last July, setting a Jamaican junior record of 3:42 sec en route.

Asked about his choice of sport which went a little against the grain in the land of reggae, Campbell explained that it all happened on a sports day at his high school. “I was 16 when they asked me to run the 5,000 metres and without any training, I came third. There were some good runners in that race, so the coach asked me to take it up seriously.”

The need to be a little different from the crowd and the ambition to become the first middle distance runner to win a gold medal for Jamaica has ensured that Campbell now runs 10 miles every two days.

... contd.