Sotomayor picks Bolt, if fit, over Gatlin
HAVANA, Cuba — Cuban athletics icon Javier Sotomayor has predicted that if Jamaica’s sprint legend Usain Bolt is fit, he will not lose to American Justin Gatlin or any other athlete in the 100 metres at the World Championships in Athletics, which begins in Beijing, China, Friday evening (Jamaica time).
Sotomayor, is an interview with the Jamaica Observer at his Miramar home in this country’s capital city last weekend, said that Bolt has what it takes to be victorious.
The high jump great, who still holds the world record of 2.45 metres (8 feet, and a quarter of an inch) and who is regarded as the greatest high jumper of all time, said that despite Gatlin’s better times this year, Bolt has had a better sprint career, which he said was a major factor heading into the championship.
“If Bolt is fit, he will definitely win,” said Sotomayor, the only high jumper to clear eight feet. “Apart from Bolt, Jamaica has a great athletics team and has a great chance of winning many medals, but of the big sprint event, I am going with Bolt over Gatlin.”
Admitting that Bolt, whom he described as the world’s favourite athlete, was also his favourite performer, Sotomayor said that apart from the great Jamaican, he had followed Jamaica’s history in athletics for many years and got to know about, or meet leading Jamaican performers, among them Donald Quarrie.
“This is so because of Cuba’s long history and good relationship with Jamaica,” he said.
Sotomayor, now 47, is a member of Cuba’s National Athletics Commission, which is headed by popular 400 and 800 metres Olympic champion Alberto Juantorena, who became the first athlete in history to win both events at the Olympics, doing so in the Canadian city of Montreal in 1976. It was the same year that Jamaica won its first 200 metres gold medal by way of Quarrie. Juantorena, nicknamed El Caballo, which means the horse, was just re-elected to the International Association of Athletics Federations’s (IAAF) Council.
Sotomayor was the dominant jumper of the 1990s, and won an Olympic gold medal at the Barcelona Games in 1992 in the high jump, an Olympic silver, as well as four World Indoor titles between 1989 and 1999, two World Championships gold and a further two World Championships silver medals.
In addition, Sotomayor also triumphed in the Pan American Games in 1987, 1991 and 1999. He missed the Olympic Games in Atlanta, USA in 1996 because of injury, and also did not compete at the 1984 and 1988 Olympics when Cuba boycotted those games.
The 1.95-metre (six feet five inches) tall sports hero told the Observer that if it was the will of the people of Jamaica, he would be ready to assist with coaching young, talented high jumpers in Jamaica, as according to him, Jamaicans were talented allround, and although the country’s athletes were more dominant in the sprint events, if they are well prepared they could also excel in the jumps as well.
“I would love to come to Jamaica to work with athletes to develop high jumping. If Jamaica needs it I will help Jamaica. Jamaicans can develop in these areas if they invest,” he insisted.
“Jamaica can learn a few things from Cuba in events like the pole vault, long jump, high jump and the javelin. What the Jamaicans can learn from us most is more about velocity,” Sotomayor added.
Regarding high jumping in Cuba, the man whom the Cuban people believe will hold the world record forever, acknowledges that Cuban jumpers are not doing well now, but he is keeping faith in them developing within a few years.
“High jumping is down now and there are not a lot of good quality jumpers here in Cuba. But in the future there will be good jumpers and maybe in the next five years Cuba will be strong in high jump again,” he said, expressing pessimism too in Cuba’s World Championships athletic squad, which he said might not win “many medals” because “the team is not that strong”.
Cuba and the United States cooled 54 years of hostility last week by formalising diplomatic relations between both countries, something that Sotomayor, and the typical Cuban believes will work out better for the Spanish-speaking country of over 11 million inhabitants in the long run.
“It is a positive. It is a good thing and if the relationship is developed the proper way, among the things that will benefit is sports.
“Now that the good idea has turned into something positive, hopefully the blockade can end soon and both countries can cooperate to build each other,” he said of the 54-year-old embargo that was imposed by the United States shortly after Fidel Castro-led forces overthrew fascist dictator Fulgencio Batista on January 1, 1959.
The man whom Cubans said loves to party a lot described himself as someone who is “enjoying life. I am in good health and enjoying life with my four sons,” he said, as one of them jumped into his lap during the backend of the interview.
He proudly displays a high jump bar in his front yard, located close to the elaborate Russian Embassy, which bears the height that he cleared in 1993 in the Spanish city of Salamanca.
He retired from competition in 2001.