CHAMPS stars – Where are they now?
It’s that time of year again. Fast times, high jumps, long throws and did I mention fast times? The track season is upon us again.
After all that happened at last year’s staging of the ISSA Boys and Girls Championships, from Akeem Bloomfield’s 400m record to Calabar’s 4x400m record, not to mention Chris Taylor’s absolute supremacy or even JC’s deadly jumping duo, Obrien Waysome and Clayton Brown, we can’t help but eagerly anticipate what 2016 has in store us.
However, for all the true track and field fans, no matter how much you support one school and put down your rivals, you still appreciate the good talent they produce and look forward to the day they represent Jamaica on the big stage. That truly is the BIG picture. One day these very athletes that do great things on the high school level will someday do even greater things on the national and international level. This, however, is not always the case.
Let’s go back in time for a minute. The year 2009, the year of the famed Kingston College’s 1.5 point ‘Champs’ victory. The year then co-captain Keiron Stewart was on top of his game, leading his team to victory, winning both the 110m hurdles (13.49) and 400m hurdles (51.14). This is the same Stewart that came second at the 2007 CARIFTA Games to the Barbadian and 2009 World Champion Ryan Brathwaite. The same Keiron Stewart who again in 2008 went back to the CARIFTA games leaving with a Gold in the 110mh and a silver in the 400mh, additionally finishing third at the 2008 IAAF World Junior Championships. Clearly Stewart was not short of potential.
Fast forward to 2011, after moving to Texas for school, at age 21, Stewart clocked a then personal best and world leading time of 13.44s breaking the 15-year-old school record and quickly pushing Stewart back to the forefront of everyone’s mind. KC’s onetime superhero was now really looking like he was about to make the transition into a serious international competitor. At the 2011 National trials, Stewart lined up against Jamaica’s 110mh best. Losses to both Andrew Riley and Dwight Thomas and we haven’t heard much from him since.
After graduating from The University of Texas at Austin in 2013 with a B.Sc. in Corporate Communication, according to his LinkedIn profile he’s currently Public Relations Executive at telecommunications giants Digicel with skills in social media.
When posed the question, “Why’d you put down the track and field career?”, Stewart’s answer was simply put “No pension plan and I can work way beyond 35 years old with my new career.” Soon after, former Minister of State in the Ministry of Tourism and Entertainment Damian Crawford had his own suggestion of a pension plan.
