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MVP EMBRACES THE WORLD
That he should now be
universally accepted as a coach, non-pareil, par excellence and other
titles that speak to brilliance and achievement, is the type of story of
which only dreams are made. This rotund, pot-bellied mass of a man has earned and continues to earn, not only his keep, but the respect, adulation and, indeed, envy of the world of track and field. Both the worlds fastest man and woman, untainted and unencumbered by scandal, in one camp?. Let us be real, now, this man is, simply, fantastic. His bellicose, yet supremely confident style has not endeared him to many, but, who cares, he knows his craft and he has been ‘’ramming his success down the throats of his detractors’’. Check this. A would be female applicant to join his camp asks him, on seeing the results his athletes were producing at the Helsinki World Champs in 2005. ‘’What is the criteria for me to join your star-studded training group, do I have to run 10.9, is that the criteria?. The terse response ‘’No but if you join, you will run 10.9 and better, once you are in the group’’. . What bravado?, what confidence?. Now that athlete, a South African, Geraldine Pillay, is into a new sphere of her athletic career and enjoying it immensely, seeking to encourage others of her country folk, with similar ambition, to ‘’log on’’ to the enigma that defines this coaching guru. ‘’The only regret I have is not coming here in 2005, as by now I would be well seasoned in the program. It took a lot of effort to convince Stephen Francis that I was serious and that I would not be coming here to waste his time, I am happy. I want to be a 10.9 or a 10.8 sprinter and this is the place to be’’, the words of Geraldine Pillay. The 11.07/22.78 sprinter who hails from the City of Cape Town, famous for Robben Island, the home of former President Nelson Mandela during his years of incarceration in an apartheid torn regime, spoke to her fellow athletes, back home. ‘’The only way, the only path to success is doing hard work, working hard and working smart. I have seen people working hard but not really working smart and I have come here to the Stephen Francis group and I have seen people working hard and working smart with a goal in mind. You must want it, you must have the hunger for success, as no one else can want it for you. I am very fortunate, very blessed to be here, training with Asafa, Brigitte, Michael, Shericka and company and I want to make the best of it. I want to be a role model and, with this mind, this is the place to be’’. Geraldine Pillay, now where she wants to be, on the doorsteps of crashing through new barriers, all because the visionary Jamaican coach, Stephen Francis and his MVP Club sought to ‘’embrace the world’’. Laurie Foster is a veteran sports writer, cricket, being his first foray into sports journalism, but, recently, ‘’addicted’’ to track and field, where he has covered, both for radio and the written press, several IAAF World Series events, starting from the World Juniors in Sudbury, Canada, 1988. |
When
former Wolmers High School for Boys coach, Stephen Francis forfeited a
career in the lucrative financial world to take up coaching full-time,
he was thought, by friends and foes alike, to be a candidate for
confinement to the nation’s premier institution for the treatment of
mental maladies.
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