BY HOWARD WALKER Observer senior reporter walkerh@jamaicaobserver.com
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
SEEN as the next big find by Racers head coach Glen Mills, Kemar Bailey-Cole stepped out of the shadows of his more illustrious countrymen Usain Bolt, Asafa Powell and Yohan Blake and announced himself to the world in 2014.
The promising 22-year-old, who came to prominence in 2009 while representing Old Harbour High School running 10.41 seconds as a 17-year-old, struck it big-time in 2014, capturing two gold medals in the blue ribbon 100m and 4x100m relays at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scothland.
He also won three Diamond League races, defeating former 100m world record holder Asafa Powell twice, before ending his season with a bronze at the IAAF Continental Cup.
Bailey-Cole, standing at 6ft 4in, has more than a passing resemblance to the great Usain Bolt and is another athlete dropping off the conveyor belt of talented Jamaican sprinters.
At age 20, he became just the 12th Jamaican to dip below the 10-second barrier in 2012 with 9.97 seconds at the IAAF World Challenge in Madrid, Spain, where he finished second. He has not looked back since.
He would win gold as part of Jamaica’s 4x100m relays at team the 2012 Olympics where he ran in the semi-finals and relay gold again at the 2013 World Championships in Moscow, Russia, and ran his personal best of 9.93 seconds. But it would be 2014 that Bailey-Cole would really make his mark.
With the legendary Bolt and the 2011 world champion Blake absent from the 100m at the Commonwealth Games in late July, Bailey-Cole seized the opportunity and won his first global individual gold.
Coming out of the blocks slowly, Bailey-Cole with his long, loping strides, accelerated past the fast-starting Adam Gemili of England and fellow Jamaicans Nickel Ashmeade and Jason Livermore to win in 10.00 seconds. Gemili was second in 10.10 and Ashmeade third in 10.12 seconds.
Both Bailey-Cole and Ashmeade had met five years earlier at the famous Boys’ and Girls’ High School Athletics Championship in Jamaica, with Ashmeade finishing second in 10.31 ahead of Bailey-Cole third with 10.64. The winner was the 2008 World Junior champion and 2007 World Youth winner Dexter Lee in 10.31 seconds. So Bailey-Cole has shown how far he has come and he wasn’t finished just yet.
On August 24 at the Birmingham Diamond League Meet, the newly crowned Commonwealth Games champion secured a one-two for Jamaica by beating his countryman Nesta Carter to the line in 10.08 seconds.
Then four days later, on August 28 at the Zurich Diamond League, Bailey-Cole stopped the clock at 9.96 seconds ahead of Mike Rodgers in 10.05. James Dasaolu of Great Britain was third in 10.06. This race saw the return of Asafa Powell and Tyson Gay from suspension. Powell was fifth in 10.07 with Gay finishing in 10.35 seconds. Carter and Richard Thompson of Trinidad and Tobago were sixth and seventh, respectively.
On September 2, at the 64th Hanzekovic Memorial in Zagreg, Croatia, Bailey-Cole chased down former 100m record holder Asafa Powell and nabbed him on the line. So close was the race that it took the organisers a few minutes to announce that the fast-finishing Bailey-Cole was the winner. Both were timed at 10.07 seconds, with USA’s Mike Rodgers third in 10.10.
Having celebrated his birthday on January 10, Bailey-Cole would certainly like to make it a fantastic week by also celebrating the RJR Sports Foundation 2014 National Sportsman of the Year Award, but regardless of the outcome, he was certainly a winner last season.
View the original article here
Bailey-cole came of age in 2014
