BASKETBALL

Let me place it on the record that I did not, repeat not, root against the American women in the finals against Australia.

I am sorry the women messed up the 4x100 relays but I was so happy to see the Jamaican woman run down the Russian that I had no time for tears for the Americans.

I missed the 200 metres in which Jamaica won but Compton Rodney, my first-year, high-school who happened to be in Athens, and reported the results to me.

And why did I say my first-year, high-school classmate? Because, being a lot more intelligent than I was, CompT and a bunch of my contemporaries, went to the higher class in the second year, while I continued to languish in the other class, sort of wasting my youth, not living up to my potential.

So when I told my children, and tell my grandchildren, what it takes to succeed, I speak, as an underachiever, whose development was arrested in those teen years, when I was almost suspended for placing crackerballs under the seats, during the lunch hour, at Kingston Technical School, and left without graduating to work, one week short of 18, at The Daily Gleaner.

So I have spent the days since then, admiring guys like the late Trevor Douet, Compton Rodney, Canute Parris, Altamont Weise and Karl Lewin, who for a moment there seemed to be lagging, only to blossom into the wiz that he has become.

My hat's off to them all.

Patrick Barry Barr