In Part One, Sporting Pro delves into the upbringing and track and field career of Olympian Juliet Cuthbert-Flynn. Next Sunday, Sporting Pro looks at the post-track career of the Jamaican icon.

She was born to run.

However, after a glittering track career that saw her win medals of all colours in global championships from the 1980s to the 1990s, Juliet Cuthbert-Flynn emerged as a voice of the people.

It began in traditional style in rural Jamaica — with a rather humble family background. But growing up, the Olympic sprinter-turned-politician was never short of food nor adult guidance and supervision.

“It was not a pampered upbringing, it was a typical, rural upbringing,” Cuthbert-Flynn, who turns 58 on April 9, told the Jamaica Observer.

“I am from a very extended family. It was just me and my sister, but in the yard were two houses, and we had cousins and at least nine uncles and one aunt. My mother had emigrated, so it was my sister and I who were left with my great-grandmother to raise us,” said the Port Morant, St Thomas native.

“We got everything we wanted because my grand-uncle would pick up the slack if my mother didn’t have enough money to send to us at any given time. But we never needed food, we were never hungry, we had three meals a day and supper.

“We ate a lot of ground provisions — I remember the yam, the banana. My great-grandmother would go to the market every Saturday and we got our beef soup. I would look forward to that beef soup every Saturday. I would call it the yellow soup because it was so yellow and rich with the pumpkin,” she said.

Beyond the confines of the family yard is where she became aware of her exceptionally quick feet.

“Growing up in Port Morant, it was real, good country life. I was a tomboy, so anywhere the boys were, that is where I was. So if they were going to crab bush, if they were going to play cricket, if they were going to play marbles, I was right in the midst.

“If they were going to go climb some tree to pick whatever, I was right there with them. If they were going to race, I was going to be in that race. Then I recognised that I was beating them — when we lined up to race, I was beating the boys. So the word got around that I was fast. So then everybody wanted to race me, including grown-ups. I would also beat the grown-ups,” she recalled.

From there, the legend only grew.

“There was the regular sports day at my school, Port Morant All-Age. I was in Yellow House and I beat everybody that day on the playing field down by Port Morant.

“After that I went to live with my cousins and I started attending the Morant Bay All-Age School. And then this strange man in glasses at sports day, I would see him following me, like standing to the side, watching my races.

“Howard Jackson was his name – he was [journalist] Dionne Jackson-Miller’s father. Somebody said ‘that’s the coach at Morant Bay High School’. And apparently, he had a conversation with the principal and then with my family and that is how, you know, back in the day they say, ‘them buy you?’

“That is how I went to Morant Bay High and the rest is history. It was Mr Jackson who saw the talent and had an eye for a talent and recruited me to Morant Bay High and that is where I started excelling,” she explained.

Cuthbert-Flynn said she emigrated to the United States at 16, and attended Olney High School in Philadelphia for two years before moving on to the University of Texas at Austin where more fame would follow.

“I did not like the cold weather. I don’t do well with cold temperatures, so I moved away. I made sure I got a scholarship to the warmer state, so I went to the University of Texas,” said Cuthbert-Flynn, now the Member of Parliament for St Andrew West Rural and the state minister in the Ministry of Health and Wellness.

“I think… that is why University of Texas is where it is now,” she told the Observer laughingly.

“Well, I think I started the women’s programme where they were now being seen. I was winning, I was the best that they had in the NCAA and we ended up winning the 1986 NCAA Championships and then we got better coaches and then started recruiting.

“So, if you are going to win NCAA, people are going to be attracted to your school. Other Jamaicans ended up being recruited to the school, because of me, one Jamaican started the trend and then other Jamaicans began coming to the school,” she reasoned.

Cuthbert-Flynn was on Jamaica’s roster for five Olympic Games from 1980 to 1996, and competed in four of them.

“The Olympic trials came in 1980… and he (Coach Jackson) said I should go. I didn’t want to, I rebelled. Poor me, a country girl who never really knew about the Olympics. It’s not like now with the television and broadcasting.

“Eventually, I went to the Olympic trials and got place 5th or 6th… they took me as a reserve for the relay team and that is where it all started,” she said.

She won silver medals in the 100m and 200m at the Games in Barcelona, Spain in 1992, and bronze as part of the 4x100m relay team at the 1996 Atlanta Games.

At the World Championships, all Cuthbert-Flynn’s medals came in the 4x100m event. She was a member of the gold medal-winning team at the 1991 event in Tokyo, Japan. She claimed silver in 1995 in Gothenburg, Sweden, and another second-place finish in the same event two years later in Athens, Greece. In 1983, her relay team took bronze in Helsinki, Finland.

Her World Indoor highlight came at the 1997 Championships in Paris, France, where she won silver in the 200m.

“At Barcelona 1992 that was the ultimate. Paris 1997 at the World Indoor Championships was a close second,” she said

“I loved the 200m, so whenever I competed in the 200m there was never any pressure, never any stress. The 100m was more pressuring and taxing for me, mentally, because it all depended on your start. There was less room for error and not a lot of time to make up.

“The 200m was like a fun event for me. I loved running the curve, I love the execution of the 200m and the different dimensions of it. It is a tactical race. And I think I enjoyed that, the tactical part where you have to run the curve, execute at different segments and put it together,” she told the Observer.

Though there was always the belief that some of her international competitors might have been on illegal substances back then, Cuthbert-Flynn said she was never phased.

“You had no proof but you could tell the difference in their conditioning, the difference in their running, the difference in their body built. We saw because we competed against these people all the time. You are also lifting weights, you are also training hard and you know your competition.

“So when they come out and start doing something extraordinary, you’re like ‘something is wrong’. But what do you do? You just have to kiss your teeth and say, ‘oh, well, they are going to get that edge’. But you still didn’t go into the race thinking that you are going to lose because you knew that you were also super talented.

“Even though we knew that they were drug cheats we didn’t let it bother us, we just went about our business and tried to execute our race the best way we could with the training that we had put in,” she said.

Editor’s note: Juliet Cuthbert-Flynn is a Jamaican Olympic legend, politician, entrepreneur, and health and fitness expert.