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Still celebrating in Jamaica

By Helene Elliott
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BEIJING -- Jamaica is under a tropical storm watch, but nothing can dampen the island nation’s enthusiasm for its new Olympic sprint stars.

Already elated over Usain Bolt’s world-record run in the men’s 100 on Saturday, Jamaicans got something else to celebrate when Shelly-Ann Fraser, Sherone Simpson and Kerron Stewart swept the women’s 100 on Sunday.

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Olivia Grange, Jamaica’s minister of information, culture, youth and sports, had said after Bolt’s stunning 9.69 that she was ‘on top of the world.’ Where did Fraser’s 10.78 and the photo-finish 10.98 each run by Simpson and Stewart leave her?

‘I am on top and all over it,’ Grange said. ‘It’s just wonderful. Amazing.

‘It’s national pride and it’s an inspiration to all Jamaica, particularly to our young people. It gives us something we can say to our young people to strive for.’

-- Helene Elliott

Olympics Blog
Helene Elliott

Helene Elliott was with the Los Angeles Times’ Sports department from 1989 to 2024, first as a staff writer and then, starting in 2006, as a columnist. She became the first female journalist to be honored with a plaque in the Hall of Fame of a major professional sport as the 2005 winner of the Hockey Hall of Fame’s Elmer Ferguson Award, awarded to writers “who have brought honor to journalism and to hockey.” A native of Brooklyn, N.Y., and graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, she has covered 18 Olympics.

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