The Editor, Sir:

With the success Jamaica is enjoying at the Beijing Olympics, and with more to come, the country needs to capitalise on the massive public relations success we are having worldwide.

I would like to echo the sentiments a reader recently wrote about building a training facility for international athletes. I would like to propose the following:

Build a dormitory next to the Trelawny Multiplex stadium to house at least 500 athletes.

Build a mondo training track nearby and install all the requisite amenities needed by athletes - gymnasium, physiotherapy centre, etc. Make it a world-class training facility. Invite both elite athletes and aspiring youngsters to train here. We could even have foreign governments pay for their top athletes to come here to train with our best.

The facility should be safe and secure whereby someone wanting to train from 2-6 a.m. could do so in a totally safe environment.

The money we receive from housing and training these athletes should then be used to build a boarding school next to the facility, where only children from the inner cities would qualify to enter. Why?

These children are the most vulnerable in society and it would be good to have a boarding school away from some of these violence-ridden inner-city areas where they have an option away from a life of crime.

No sport has put Jamaica on the map the way track and field has. The country needs to put more resources in places other than Kingston, and what better parish that Trelawny, the home parish of Usain Bolt and Veronica Campbell-Brown.

I am, etc.,

BARRINGTON GREENE

Kingston