Paris triumphs could illuminate Grenada’s centenary

Anderson Peters celebrates his 2019 world javelin title win in Doha (© Getty Images

The Grenada Athletic Association celebrated its centenary earlier this week, with 11 January 1924 inscribed in the annals of World Athletics as the day the island’s federation was founded, Phil Minshull reports for World Athletics Heritage.

However, in the cricket-loving country of barely 124,000 people in which athletics always struggled for public attention until the ascent of global superstars and world champions like Alleyne Francique, Kirani James, and Anderson Peters, there was little fanfare and not a little déjà vu with the way the federation quietly came into being a century ago.

Alleyne Francique on the way to his world indoor 400m title in Budapest (© Getty Images)

The founding of the Grenadian federation took place against a backdrop of social and political change in what were then the British colonies in the Caribbean during the early 1920s; although this was mainly more representation for the local aristocracy in the colonial administrations and, as has been noted by various historians, unemployment and poverty were rampant.

However, as a corollary to these changes, many sports federations were also formed by the colonial leaders of the time, and it is no coincidence that the Grenada Football Association was also formed in 1924.

However, Grenada joining any major international federations was still decades away.

Athletics competitions allowing any talent to be identified were also severely limited for many years owing to poor facilities, including rudimentary grass tracks.

Gittens becomes Grenada’s first athletics hero

The first Grenadian athlete to make any impact internationally, albeit on a regional basis, was the multi-talented William ‘Pablo’ Gittens in the 1950s.

As noted by Renold O’Neal in his highly informative treatise on the history of athletics in the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, which includes Grenada: “Gittens was an exceptional sportsman who also represented his county in cricket and football and in the latter sport just missed being chosen for the West Indies combined team that toured Great Britain in 1959.

“Gittens lived for a while in southern Trinidad and became a constant at the Texaco Southern Games, for many years the most important athletics competition for athletes from the British Caribbean.”

The versatile sportsman competed in these Games from 1953-58, and he twice won high jump and long jump doubles and, on another occasion, took the 400m hurdles crown.

At the British West Indies Championships – which existed from 1957-65 – Gittens also shone, and he won Grenada’s only medals: a 400m hurdles gold and high jump silver in 1958 and a 400m hurdles bronze in 1959.

Sadly, Grenada didn’t send a team to the 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games – it would be another 12 years before they participated in this competition – but Gittens would have had good chances of making the finals in Cardiff in both the high jump and 400m hurdles.

In 1960, the British West Indies sent a combined team to the Olympic Games in Rome, but no Grenadian was included in any sport, and by now, Gittens was also more focused on cricket.

International arrival

The 1960s saw no one else of the stature of Gittens come to the fore. Still, the more significant opportunities for international experience started to be provided when Grenada finally sent a team to the Commonwealth Games in 1970 – joining what was then the IAAF the same year – and the following year made its debut at the Central American and Caribbean Championships.

At the latter championships, Dunstan Campbell became Grenada’s first medallist when he took a decathlon bronze, a precursor to the country’s recent prowess in producing multi-event exponents, including 2014 Commonwealth Games bronze medallist Kurt Felix and his younger brother, the 2023 World Athletics Championships bronze medallist Lindon Victor.

Lindon Victor at the 2023 World Athletics Championships (© Getty Images) 

In 1972, the first edition of the now-famed Carifta Games, the showcase for Caribbean teenage talent, took place in Barbados, and Eros Rapier – who would go on to greater recognition as a member of the Grenada football team – took the javelin gold as well as a silver in the shot put.

It would be another nine years until Grenada’s first Carifta Games gold medal on the track was won by Maurice Williams. Still, in 1981, he memorably became the first U20 runner from the region to go under 15 minutes for 5000m, and, amazingly, it is still a national record almost 43 years later.

The early 1980s saw a blossoming of Grenadian athletics talent, with long jumper Jacinta Bartholomew becoming her country’s first female Carifta Games gold medallist in 1983.

After also competing at the inaugural World Athletics Championships later that year, Bartholomew – who would go on to have an impressive US collegiate career as a sprinter – made Grenadian sporting history in 1984 as the first woman from her country to compete at the Olympics.

Olympic debut in Los Angeles

With the Grenada National Olympic Committee formed in 1982, the country sent a seven-strong team – two athletes and five boxers – to the Games for the first time.

Bartholomew, the only woman on the team, just missed out on the final and produced the best result from a Grenadian athlete until two-time world 400m indoor champion Alleyne Francique was to fall short of a medal with fourth place over one lap of the track in Athens 20 years later.

Grenada continued to have a production line of medallists at the Carifta Games and Central American Championships. Still, one needs to fast forward until the start of the new millennium before the feats of Francique rightly earned him the status of being the island’s first internationally recognized athletics star.

Francique’s potential was realized once he started studying at the famed athletics hothouse of Louisiana State University in 2001, running under 45 seconds for the first time that year.

At the 2004 World Athletics Indoor Championships, he took the lead in the 400m final just before the bell and was never headed, crossing the line in 45.88 to become Grenada’s first global athletics champion.

However, the Olympics later that year saw him come home behind a US medal sweep, a disappointment that lingers today. “[Having] the whole country cheering you was challenging. I wanted to win so badly that I put a lot of pressure on myself, and I ended up coming fourth,” he reflected recently.

Francique bounced back, though, and in 2006, he retained his world indoor title in Moscow two years later, retiring and subsequently becoming a renowned coach, including guiding USA’s Fred Kerley to the 2022 100m world title.

Not surprisingly, Francique was a role model for his successor as the island’s 400m record-holder, Kirani James.

James gets global acclaim

James first came to attention in 2007 when he broke the world age-14 400m best and won a silver medal at the World Athletics U18 Championships against athletes up to three years older.

After that, his rise was meteoric.

He won world U18 and U20 titles in 2009 and 2010 before triumphing on a senior stage at the 2011 World Athletics Championships – with compatriot Rondell Bartholomew also making the final and finishing sixth – to become one of just a handful of athletes to have won world titles in all three categories, amazingly in successive years.

Kirani James celebrates his 2011 world 400m title win in Daegu (© Getty Images)

The prodigious talent then flew to gold at the London 2012 Olympic Games, getting his country’s first Olympic medal of any color. He won in 43.94 to become the first non-US runner to go under the milestone of 44 seconds.

James described his win at the time as “A huge step for our country in terms of stepping up to the plate in track and field, just going out there and putting us on the map.”

Although London was to be his last global title, James has gone on to take two further medals at both the Olympic Games and World Athletics Championships and, showing that age has not dulled his talents, he was the 2022 and 2023 Wanda Diamond League winner.

James will only be 32 this year by the time of the Olympic Games and should still be in the battle for medals in the No.1 Olympic sport in Paris, as will the two-time javelin world champion Anderson Peters.

Peters showed he was ready to make an impact on the international scene when he won at the 2016 Carifta Games on home soil in the Grenadian capital St George’s – with the Games returning to Grenada for just the third time this year from 30 March-1 April at the Kirani James Stadium – with a championship and national record of 78.28m.

He improved later in 2016 to 79.65m when taking the bronze at the World Athletics U20 Championships in Poland.

Nevertheless, Peters was a slightly surprising winner of the 2019 world title but showed it was far from a fluke in the first year back to post-pandemic normality when he retained his crown in Oregon in 2022, part of a halcyon year in which he had four meetings over 90 meters topped by a vast 93.07m at an early season outing at the Doha Diamond League.

The year 2023 was a difficult one for Peters as he struggled to recover from injuries, but, like James and Victor, he will be expecting to be in contention to make the podium in Paris.

Toth donates 2015 World Championships singlet to MOWA

As Simon Turnbull narrates in World Athletics Heritage, after 31km of the punishing 50km race walk at the 2015 World Championships in Beijing, the race leader could resist no longer. Matej Toth had to temporarily step off the one-kilometer loop course to answer a pressing call of nature.

A lesser soul might have wilted under the pressure. Not Toth.

Quite the opposite, in fact. For the 32-year-old Slovakian, the unscheduled pit-stop simply relieved the mounting physical pressure.

He quickly regained the momentum that had taken him comfortably clear of a loaded field and proceeded to pick up his pace – to such an extent that he finished with a cushion of one minute and 45 seconds.

Eight years on, Toth has generously donated the Slovak singlet and name bib from the day he made World Championships history to the Museum of World Athletics (MOWA).

“It seems strange, but I have to say that this 50km was maybe the easiest race in my whole life,” said Toth, whose dominant victory earned his country their first World Championships gold medal. “I lost maybe 25 seconds with the pit stop but it helped me. It enabled me to get more control.

“I want to keep the feeling of winning here in Beijing. I want to keep the memory of entering this beautiful stadium forever. I just hope I will get to enjoy such a special moment at least once more in my life.”

Toth got his wish at the Rio Olympics 12 months later but Beijing was a big breakthrough victory for him at the age of 32.

It came on the back of a major advancement in March that same year in the annual Dudinska 50, the 50km race walk held in the southern Slovakian spa town of Dudince, part of the World Race Walking Challenge series.

Toth had won the World Race Walking Cup 50km title in Chihuahua, Mexico, in 2010, but it took him a further four years to gain his first major championship medal. That was a 50km silver at the 2014 European Championships in Zurich, with a time of 3:36:21 – behind the world record 3:32:33 set by Frenchman Yohann Diniz.

In Dudince the following March, Toth threatened to break Diniz’ global mark – being four seconds up at 20km (1:26:51) and level at 30km (2:09:20) – before finishing in 3:34:38. That put him third on the world all-time list, behind Diniz and Russia’s Denis Nizhegorodov (3:34:14).

Buoyed by confidence from such a stunning performance on home ground, Toth attacked from virtually the start at the World Championships in Beijing, leading for more than 49km.

At 5km, he led by eight seconds from Brazil’s Mario Jose Dos Santos Jr. At 10km, he was 27 seconds clear, with Ireland’s Rob Heffernan, the 2013 champion, in second place.

The gap grew to 55 seconds at halfway, which the Slovakian reached in 1:51:17. Despite his urgent ‘comfort break’, he covered the second half in 1:49:15, gaining a further 50 seconds on the field.

Toth flew across the line in the Bird’s Nest Stadium in 3:40:32. Australia’s Jared Tallent was a distant runner-up in 3:42:17, with Japan’s Takayuki Tanii claiming bronze in 3:42.55.

For Toth, six months past his 32rd birthday, it was the culmination of more than two decades of race walking graft.

Matej Toth in the 50km race walk at the IAAF World Championships, Beijing 2015 (© Getty Images)

Young talent

Growing up in Nitra, he tried hurdling and endurance running before getting bitten by the race walk bug. After three months of training under the guidance of Peter Meciar, a local race walking coach and journalist, Toth entered a 2km race in the town of Surany.

“I won in a time of about 10:20,” Toth recalled. “Two days before that race, my parents had bought me new shoes. I’m sure that motivated me to walk that little bit faster.”

By the age of 14, Toth was fast enough to make the international grade. He finished third in the U18 race at the World Race Walking Cup in Podebrady in the Czech Republic in May 1997.

“I remember it was very exciting to the see elite athletes producing top performances,” he said. “It was very motivational.”

Eighth in the 10km race walk at the World U20 Championships in Bydgoszcz in 1999 and 16th at the World U20 Championships in Kingston in 2002, Toth made steady progress after making the step up to senior international level at the 20km distance.

He was 32nd at the Athens Olympics in 2004, 21st at the 2005 World Championships in Helsinki and 14th at the 2007 World Championships in Osaka, before slipping back to 26th at the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

Change to 50km – ‘great motivation for the future’

“That was the first major disappointment on my career,” said Toth, referring to his second Olympic experience. “I prepared very hard and expected a top-10 finish but ended up 26th.

“I asked myself some hard questions after the race and wondered if it was time to retire. However, after a discussion with my coach, we decided to change my event from the 20km to the 50km.

“This provided a great motivation for the future and I was determined to prove I could compete with the top race walkers. I trained hard, enjoyed a great winter’s preparation, and in the first 50km race I completed, I set a national record.”

Matej Toth smashes the 50km course record in Dudince (© Jan Viazanicka / SITA)

Under the direction of coach Matej Spisiak in Basnka Bytrica, Toth emerged as a major force at 50km in March 2009, clocking 3:41:32 in Dudince. Five months later, he finished ninth at the distance at the World Championships in Berlin, also placing eighth at 20km.

Then, in 2010, came victory over 50km at the World Race Walking Cup in Chihuahua. “That was my first big medal,” Toth reflected. “It was a big surprise, not only for my opponents but also for me.

“It was great to stand on the highest podium and sing the Slovak national anthem. That was the day I realised I could win other major events – one day possibly Olympic gold.”

Rio 2016 – ‘only in the last 500m that I knew I would win’

Fifth at the London Olympics in 2012, and at the 2013 World Championships in Moscow, Toth proceeded to follow up his golden breakthrough at the 2015 World Championships in Beijing with Olympic 50km success in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.

Matej Toth in the 50km race walk at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games (© Getty Images)

In scorching hot conditions, the Slovak kept his cool as Diniz set off at a punishing pace. At halfway the Frenchman was almost two minutes clear but Toth kept his powder dry, eventually overhauling Australia’s Jared Tallent with 2km remaining to claim his country’s first ever Olympic gold in an athletics event.

“It was one of the hardest races of my career,” said Toth. “The weather was even worse than in Beijing. It was only in the last 500m that I knew I would win.”

Toth could not quite replicate his Midas touch at continental level, taking a second silver medal at the 2018 European Championships in Berlin in 2018.

After injury and the Covid lockdown, he mustered himself for one final shot at international glory at the delayed Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2021.

At the age of 38, Toth finished 14th in the 50km race in Sapporo – a battling finale for the great Slovakian foot-soldier of race walking.