BANKING ON TALENT: Chairman of NCB Michael Lee-Chin (centre) presenting a symbolic sponsorship cheque of $6 million to MVP club president Bruce James (second left) as head coach and vice-president Stephen Francis (left), Sherone Simpson (second right) and Asafa Powell look on. (Photo: Bryan Cummings)

With less than three years to go before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, National Commercial Bank (NCB) has stepped up to back the MVP Track Club.

NCB will provide the Stephen Francis-coached club with $1.5 million a year for the next four years, as, according to its chairman Michael Lee-Chin, it had the necessary ingredients for success.

Lee-Chin cited "confidence, perseverance, discipline, thinking long-term", and "having pride" as hallmarks of the club that has produced world-record holder Asafa Powell, world championships silver medallists Michael Frater and Brigitte Foster, and Olympic relay gold medallist Sherone Simpson.

"These (traits) are also necessary for a successful country," Lee-Chin added, noting that the money will be used for nutritional support and other aspects of the club's training programme.

Meanwhile, Francis, who serves as head coach and vice-president of the MVP club, which has some 50 athletes, said the "directors have struggled with the athletes in the programme".

Francis said he had been "afraid to coach athletes locally, as they are shipped off overseas by 18 and 19", but he was approached by Brigitte Foster and he and a group of persons decided to establish MVP (Maximizing Velocity and Power) Track and Field Club in 1999.

He noted that the athletes had the "talent and will to work hard" and that NCB was the first company to show that "MVP is doing a worthy thing for the athletes in Jamaica who are beating the world".

Coaching is "a very, very expensive business", said Francis, and that NCB could expect a "lot of success by the athletes on whom the money will be spent".

He pointed that "Brigitte defied everybody" with her bronze at the Helsinki World Championships as "they thought that she was finished".

President of the MVP Bruce James said the money would be used especially for those athletes "who have not made their mark".

He pointed to 19 year-old Shericka Williams, who, in less than a year of training, had become national champion and earned a silver medal at last month's World Championships in Helsinki.

The MVP president said Lee-Chin "put his money where his mouth is" and as NCB sought to "build a better Jamaica", MVP club "will seek to build a better athlete".

James also made clear that MVP athletes, whenever they compete, did so as "Jamaicans" not for "MVP, money, or for themselves".

He had glowing praise for the "engine" and "brain" of the club, Stephen Francis, whom he said was producing "the very best in the world right here in Jamaica".

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