Go Team Jamaica!

A former Jamaican student of mine had emailed me the headline news from Jamaica's Gleaner about the victory of Usain Bolt's world-record smashing 9.69 run in the 100 meters, capturing Olympic gold. I had already stayed up past midnight to see this historic run, but definitely appreciate a student of mine sharing his national and regional pride.



No sooner do I read about Jamaicans using Bolt's win as an excuse to party all night long in downtown Kingston, blaring dancehall reggae throughout the streets, than I'm checking BBC news to learn that the women were just as phenomenal today - packing in a 1-2-3 punch as fellow Jamaican Shelly-Ann Fraser captured the gold in the women's 100 meter dash, followed by her countrywomen Sherone Simpson and Kerron Stewart, who both share the silver.

Well done, Jamaica! Well done!

Now, if only NBC would shed their America-centric coverage of these games and actually show us these competitions LIVE (while pretending that they're doing so when they have the words "Live" in the upper right corner on our TV screen), I'd be even happier (i.e. I would've loved to see the women's 100 meter dash like NOW! instead of waiting till past midnight!).

But that's an issue I will explore in the wider, global context of these games and foreign politics in a later post (I will be posting either later this evening or later in the week since I don't have the time to go into detail today).

Go Team Caribbean! Go Team USA! (Because, yes, I'm transnational enough to root for both.)