The recurring question in the wake of the Beijing Olympics is: What lessons are we to learn from the outstanding performance of Jamaican track athletes at those games? And, how are we to apply those lessons, if there are any, to national life and national development?

The answer to the first is simple, and the same as what ought to be the response to those foreigners who now question this apparent sudden rise of Jamaica as a global athletic power: that there is value in consistency, coherence and hard work.

For, as Don Quarrie, the great Jamaican Olympian, and Mike Fennell, president of the Jamaica Olympic Association (JOA), this rise of Jamaica is neither surprising nor sudden. Nor is it, as the foreign cynics are attempting to imply, drug-induced. For while we may have now had a 'big bang', this breakthrough has been in foment for a long time.

In other words, Usain Bolt et al didn't just happen. They are the current superstructure on the foundation of the likes of Herb McKenley, Arthur Wint and Merlene Ottey and a cogent and coherent programme for the development of Jamaican athletes. There is, in that sense, an internal logic to athletics development in Jamaica.

Bolt's sizzling runs

Take the case of Usain Bolt. He electrified the Beijing Games with his sizzling runs and engaging personality and the world, by and large, assumed that it is a bolt from the blue; although there are the cravenly cynical who know better, but seek to devalue Jamaica's performance by pretending otherwise.

The fact, though, is that neither Bolt, nor Shelly-Ann Fraser, nor Melaine Walker nor any of the others just happened. They are products of a systematic programme of athletic competition in Jamaica's primary and high school systems.

Indeed, there are few countries in the world where 30,000 people will turn out for a national high school track meet, as is the case in Jamaica each year at the national boys and girls athletics championships.

Starting from the primary/preparatory school level, with organisational and logistical support from the Jamaica Amateur Athletic Association (JAAA), there is a structured athletics programme. And the process is perennial.

World-class athletes

This notion of consistency and effort bring us back to the issue of the lesson to be learned from the Beijing Games. Jamaica has always had world-class athletes in a proportion greater than the size of the country and its population - a point made by Mr Quarrie, who, it should be pointed out, won gold and silver medals at the Montreal Olympics.

This is a fact that has been conveniently overlooked in some quarters. The country has also always had world-class coaches, who have now refined programmes that make it unnecessary for our athletes to go abroad - as was assumed necessary in the past - for the final touches to their development. A clear, coherent and consistent effort paid off at the 29th Olympiad.

It is precisely what has been done in athletics that we have failed to do in other areas of national life, particularly in economic policy programming and development. We have not delivered policies that are consistent and coherent and internally logical. So, unlike with athletics, we have failed to make the breakthrough. Therein lies the lesson for Mr Golding, and perhaps, too, the West Indies Cricket Board, to which we recommend the JAAA.