The miracle team: former Olympic medalists from Trinidad and Tobago continue to inspire young track and field athletes today.

AuthorBeaumont, Jennifer J.

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TOKYO 1964

It's a standing agreement, implicitly understood: the last weekend in April of each year, the reunion is at Roberts' home in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He makes the pelau, and depending on the chill in the air, they gather around the pool or fill the family room. Then the stories begin. There's Roberts' story about running for the prize of sugar, getting a gag prize of salt, but recognizing at age nine that he was a lightning streak among the runners. There's Kent's story of being dared by classmate, Orville Harris, at age fifteen to compete in the 100 yard dash, beating the star runner while running barefoot, and deciding then and there to give up soccer. Skinner's trajectory onto the national and international sports arena evolved from family routines; his father, a WWII Army veteran, required all seven sons to run with him each morning before school. For Wendell, it started in elementary school where he toyed with the long jump and the triple jump before deciding to hone his skills as a distance runner. Finally Len's involvement in sports was a purposeful decision--made at age ten after reading Dickens' Great Expectations--to use athletics as the stairway to higher education.

Edwin Roberts, Kent Bernard, Edwin Skinner, and Wendell Mottley were the men who put Trinidad and Tobago in the spotlight for athletics at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo, Japan. The country had sent teams to the Olympics since 1948, but Trinidad won its first medals in track and field in 1964 when Roberts took the bronze in the 200 meter; Wendell earned a silver in the 400 meter; and Kent, Roberts, Skinner, and Wendell ran together as members of the 4 x 400 meter relay team to win the bronze. It was the first and last time that Trinidad and Tobago medaled in that event at an Olympic Games---earning them the moniker "The Miracle Team." Two years later, in 1966, with Skinner hurt; Lennox Yearwood, unsuccessful in the 800 meter, joined the 4 x 400 relay team to help set a world record at the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Kingston, Jamaica. Calypso artist Young Killer memorialized that event in song:

Yearwood ran 800 and he flop But in the relay came back on top With Mottley, Roberts, and Kent Bernard They made history for Trinidad. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

T rack and field aficionados the world over know the last weekend in April as the date for the oldest and largest indoor relay carnival in North America held annually at the...

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