Jamaica’s athletics successes and the international response

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Caribbean Games 2009
The Caribbean Games 2009 will facilitate a rare opportunity to showcase the immense sporting talent that pervades our region. It is an opportunity for the world to stand aside and watch us compete against each other and realise magnificent sport.
The rest of the world has sporting events that bring their peoples together – The Asian Games, The Afro Asian Games, The African Games, the European Championships and the like. The time has come for us to have our own Caribbean Games.
For us the experience must be a joyous one that allows us to share ourselves. We must become more familiar with each other and be encouraged to work more assiduously as one people to enhance the region.
Caribbean Games 2009 must bridge the gap between the peoples of the Caribbean. It must allow for us to commit to excellence in sport with the strong helping the weak and together rising to new heights.
Caribbean Games 2009 must become an event, a sporting spectacle that Caribbean peoples must support and allow to embody their loftiest aspirations.
Caribbean Games 2009 must show the world that when working together the peoples of the Caribbean are as competent as the best in the world.
Sport must become, as Caribbean Games Chairperson, Dennise Demming advocates, ‘the weapon of choice’ of Caribbean youths as they combat the challenges of life in the very difficult world in which we now ‘live and move and have our being’.