Jamaica is enjoying success in sports on the world stage that is making bigger and richer, much bigger and much richer countries envious of its achievements and quite rightly so.

Eleven years ago, for example, the Reggae Boyz, Jamaica's football ambassadors, made it to the World Cup finals in France; last year, the country's athletes, headed by the incomparable Usain Bolt, went to the Olympic Games in Beijing and stunned the world; and this year, again led by the giant from Trelawny, the athletes went to the IAAF World Championships in Athletics in Berlin and dazzled the world.

A few days ago, in Manchester, England, the Sunshine Girls, Jamaica's netball reps, after coming in third so many times in big championships, came in second behind New Zealand in the newly formed Fast Net championship - a finish that led JNA president, the indefatigable Marva Bernard, to let go from her heart.

Pride

Speaking in the VIP Lounge at the Norman Manley International Airport last Monday and for all to hear, president Bernard said, "Finally we are here and there is a huge press conference," and then, with pride in her voice, she went on to say to her girls, "You know we are not just going through the side door this time."

When one looks at the many outstanding performances and achievements by Jamaicans in recent years, Jamaicans are awesome, and although, for a country so small and so poor financially, for a country with so much to do for those who cannot do for themselves, Jamaica should be careful how much it spends in building sports stars and on celebrating their success with them, they deserve all that the country has done in an effort to say "thank you".

Although there has never been one from any where in the world like Bolt, and even though the performance of Shelly-Ann Fraser, Kerron Stewart, and Sherone Simpson in finishing one, two, two in the women's 100 metres at the Beijing Olympics had never been done by any country before, Jamaica has had many glorious performances and has produced many champions in the past - performances and performers that, at the time, left the rest of the world in wonder and amazement.

Tomorrow is Heroes Day, it will the day when we toast the heroes of this country, and it is as good a time as any to remember some of the champions in sport who made Jamaicans of yesterday as proud as Jamaicans of today.

Stellar performances

Jamaica's qualification for the World Cup finals in France, Veronica Campbell-Brown's 200 metres victory at the Olympic Games in Athens in 2004, Bolt's world record 9.69 seconds and 19.30 seconds over the 100 and the 200 metres in Beijing last year, his 9.58 and 19.19 at the World Championships this year, Fraser's gold medal in the women's 100 metres in Beijing with Stewart second, and other performances like Melaine Walker's gold medals in the women's 400 metres in Beijing and in Berlin and Brigitte Foster-Hylton's gold medal in the 110 metres were grand and glorious achievements and no one can question that.

Lest we forget, there were also Trecia Smith's gold medal in the triple jump and Maurice Smith's silver medal in the decathlon, both at the World Championships.

There was a time, however, when just to get to something like the Olympic Games much less to reach the final of an event was an achievement, and there was a time when Jamaicans, in general, did not even know about the World Cup of football much less even to dream of playing in it.

In that time, however, afterwards and into the 1990s, men like George Headley, Hines Johnson, Alfred Valentine, Allan Rae, Collie Smith, Gerry Alexander, Roy Gilchrist, and Jackie Hendriks, Lawrence Rowe, Michael Holding, Jeffrey Dujon, and Courtney Walsh carried the flag around the world by their outstanding performances on the West Indies team; and in that time, and apart from the exploits of champion footballers like Lindy Delapenha, Alexander, and Gillie Heron in England, Selwyn Murphy - the Pirate of Port Royal, Siddie Bartlett, Anthony Hill, Vester Constantine, Art Welch, and Neville Oxford, apart from champion boxers like Bunny Grant and Percy Hayles, and world champions like Michael McCallum and Trevor Berbick, Jamaica, in the days when only two teams qualified from the region, went to within one team of qualifying for the 1966 World Cup in England.

Photo finish

In that time, on the track, at the 1948 Olympic Games in London and the 1952 Games in Helsinki, at a time when the world wondered what was and where was Jamaica, Arthur Wint and George Rhoden won gold medals in the men's 400 metres, according to a photo-finish camera and the judges, Herb McKenley lost the men's 100 metres to American Lindy Remegino only by a whisker, and in Jamaica's greatest run before Bolt's many unforgettable performances, Wint, Les Laing, McKenley, and Rhoden shocked the world with a world-record run in the 4x400 metres relay.

In that time, Cynthia Thompson became the first Jamaican woman to reach an Olympic final, Lennox Miller won silver and bronze medals at the Olympic Games, Don Quarrie won Olympic gold and silver in the 200 and the 100 metres, Bert Cameron became world champion in the 400, Grace Jackson won the Olympic silver in Seoul behind the late Florence Griffith Joyner - the fastest woman of all time, Juliet Cuthbert won Olympic silver medals in the women's 100 and 200, Deon Hemmings won the gold medal in the 400 metres hurdles at the 1996 Olympic Games, and Merlene Ottey, Jamaica's most decorated athlete, won Olympic silver and bronze medals and World Championships gold and silver medals in the sprint events.

In that time, with the exploits of champions like hurdler and sprinter Keith Gardner, sprinter Denis Johnson - who once held the 100 yards world record, and George Kerr winning the cheers of the day, and even before Jamaica, hot Jamaica, participated with distinction in bobsleigh at the Winter Olympics, Jamaica was doing great things in sport.

Boasted many champions

Although both sports have faded and are among those now looking for a second spring, table tennis and hockey, for example, with three like Fuarnado Roberts, Glen Mitchell, and Leo Davis, with one like Ryan White, and golf, with two like Biah Maragh and Seymour Rose, boasted many champions and were successful.

Jamaica was so good at table tennis in those days that apart from the fact that eight-year-old Joy Foster was listed in the Guinness Book of Records as being the youngest national champion in the whole wide world, and that apart from producing players like Dave Foster, Monica DeSouza, Anita Belnavis, and Orville Haslam, the members of the West Indies team to the World Table Tennis Championships in Dortmund, Germany, in 1959, were all Jamaicans.

They were Roberts, Mitchell, Davis, and Maurice Foster.

Heroes are people who should never ever be forgotten, especially those who were pioneers, and as great as they are, as we toast the heroes of today, as we lift our glasses to champions like Bolt, Fraser, Campbell-Brown, Walker, Foster-Hylton, Stewart, and Asafa Powell, Theodore Whitmore, Ricardo Gardner, and to Ricardo Fuller, we should remember stalwarts like Headley, McKenley, Delapenha, McCallum, and although she never won a medal at the highest level, a woman like Thompson.

Apart from the fact that to the people of their time they were as great as the champions of today, apart from the fact that some of them, after so many, many years, and in particular in sports like cricket, football, and table tennis, are still considered by many to be better than some of the best of today, they paved the way, all of them, for the champions, the heroes of today.