Coach Stephen Francis (right) and Asafa Powell addressing the media in the Hospitality Room at the Norman Manley International Airport shortly after their arrival on Wednesday evening. (Photo: Joseph Wellington)

Stephen Francis, the coach responsible for guiding Asafa Powell over the last four years, has been hailed for his role in guiding locally based athletes - not least Powell - to world standard. The following is an edited version of Francis' impromptu statement during a televised reception in the Hospitality Room of the Norman Manley International Airport shortly after he arrived alongside Powell from Athens, where the sprinter broke the 100-metre world record, setting a new mark of 9.77 seconds.

I may seem a bit 'underwhelmed' about all this, but the truth is it was not really that big a surprise. It was something which Asafa and I sat down after the Olympics last year and outlined as a major goal for this year. So it is a relief and I am happy that he has achieved one of those goals for this season.

The other goal that he has achieved is that he is now the top male athlete in track and field, which is a first for any Jamaican and he is ranked above all the other superstars ... we have other goals which we want to achieve, but in 2001 when I saw Asafa running at the National Stadium at Champs I was immediately attracted to him mainly because nobody knew him, including me. And at that time, it was inconceivable that any of the top athletes would want to stay in Jamaica to train, so I focused on him. I figured he had good prospects.

I would be lying if I told you at the time that I thought he would be at this point now. At the time I didn't have that much confidence in myself as a coach, because I had just started.
And I didn't know that we had the support structure around us to get to this kind of level. But ... some people played a very prominent role in the transformation of Asafa to what he is now, starting firstly with his parents, who allowed him to stay the course...

A lot of other parents, when he started to run faster, would have decided to ship him off to the States, especially with his brother being there. I believe his brother was also a coach.
But Donovan (brother) and his parents and Nigel (brother) took the decision that Asafa was going to stay and see what would happen here. There was also Dr (Rae) Davis, Dennis Johnson and Anthony Davis... the people responsible for sports at UTech who have allowed a programme like this to develop there.

Then there is the track house ... where it all starts, where the athletes live... The conditions might not be great, but there is a new house which the athletes are moving into in September and I am sure that will help us to continue this kind of work. And of course in addition, there are the people who Asafa trains with.

Brigitte (Foster) is the standard bearer here. She was the first person to show that we can be on top of the world right here. I think that her dedication and her attitude to training has been invaluable to all the other athletes, Sherone (Simpson), Asafa, Michael (Frater), Jermaine Mason ... everybody has learnt a lot from her and if it wasn't for her I don't think we could really achieve what we have achieved in MVP (track club). And of course, we have a lot of other people like Bruce James, our masseurs, our sports staff, our strength coach. A lot of people, doctors... and most importantly Liz Robinson (physiotherapist) who passed away (earlier this year) was a huge source of help to us...

Whenever Asafa had anything wrong with him, Liz would always find the time, anytime of day or night to treat him free, and I think that was extremely important for us.

There are other medical persons, Dr Blake, Dr Chow, who we have depended on. ... It was a team effort and I want to congratulate Asafa again and to let him know that even though it doesn't look as if I am happy ... as far as yesterday (Tuesday) went, he did very, very well. But to remind him and everybody else, that this thing has just begun and we have many, many more goals to achieve.

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