In the Moscow Olympics of 1980 Mr David Weller stunned the world by claiming a bronze medal in cycling.

To this day, that’s Jamaica’s only Olympic medal outside of track and field athletics.

Mr Weller apart, long before Jamaica earned political Independence from Britain in 1962, our athletes on the track and, more latterly in field events, have monopolised Olympic glory.

To reiterate the dominant theme from the recent Paris Olympics: That Games was the first at which Jamaican field events athletes won more medals — four, including one gold, two silver and a bronze — than their track mates (a silver and a bronze).

Before Paris, Jamaica’s only field event Olympic medal was Mr James Beckford’s silver at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics in long jump.

The dominance of our track athletes dates back to London in 1948 and Helsinki in 1952 when the famous foursome Messrs Arthur Wint, George Rhoden, Herb McKenley, and Les Laing first made Jamaican track and field the envy of the world.

Mr Rhoden, the last of that legendary four, and arguably Jamaica’s greatest-ever 400 metre runner — ahead of Messrs Wint, McKenley and Bertland Cameron — died last weekend at age 97 in the United States, where he had spent the bulk of his adult life.

To this day he remains Jamaica’s only individual Olympic 400-metre gold medal winner. And, until Mrs Veronica Campbell-Brown at Athens in 2004, Mr Rhoden was the only Jamaican double gold medal winner at Olympic Games.

He went without a medal in 1948, as a very young man, after dropping out at the semi-final stage of the individual 400 metres. What seemed a certain medal in the 400m relay disappeared with injury to Mr Wint.

Four years later Mr Rhoden, whose talent was nurtured and matured at Morgan State University in Maryland, was ready for the big times in Helsinki.

Running on the outside in the individual 400 metres, Mr Rhoden famously shaded the legendary Mr McKenley for the gold medal in a then Olympic record time.

And in the even more famous gold medal race of 1952, Mr Rhoden was the one who anchored the 4x400m Jamaica team to victory, unyieldingly holding off the great American Mr Mal Whitfield following a sensational third leg by Mr McKenley.

To this day that remains Jamaica’s only Olympic 4x400m relay gold medal.

Intriguingly, we are told in Mr Howard Campbell’s informative piece earlier this week that, unlike Messrs McKenley and Wint and most Jamaican Olympic heroes, Messrs Rhoden and Laing did not compete at annual schoolboy championships. They missed out because they did not attend elite high schools.

Mr Rhoden was recruited by an American scout for Morgan State University who saw him competing at Sabina Park and elsewhere in Kingston.

More reason for Jamaicans to recognise that hard work and determination can overcome all hurdles.

Like the highly respected 1960s Olympian Ms Vilma Charlton, this newspaper feels strongly that we must keep telling Jamaicans about their heroes and their achievements.

Ms Charlton reminds us that post the 1952 Olympics, Jamaica declared a national holiday in celebration. That’s a decade before Jamaica earned political Independence from Britain.

Ms Charlton argues that Mr Rhoden’s death is “the end of a chapter, but he represents where we began and youngsters need to know that…”

That’s the gospel truth.