Fill in the Blanks The sprint factoryOnline version Sport and success. by MaNuel Btz 1 What do sprinters Usain , Yohan Blake , Elaine Thompson and Shelly - Ann Fraser - Pryce have in common ? They ? re all world - famous Jamaican Olympic medal . Since the 1948 London Olympics , Jamaican athletes have won over 60 , almost all of them in . How does an island of 2 . 9 million inhabitants produce so many - class athletes ? It starts in school . Track and field is an important part of the curriculum and promising young athletes receive high - training from a young age at school . Then there are the Inter - Secondary Schools Championships ( known as Champs ) ? one of the biggest and popular athletics events in the country and regarded as one of the foundations of Jamaica ? s unique sporting culture . A hundred and twenty high school teams with young athletes twelve to nineteen compete in this annual nationwide competition . Like most Jamaicans , the competitors take athletics very and are determined not just to their best , but to win every time . Each year more than 30 , 000 enthusiastic fans including Olympic stars past and present , come to the five - day event live and thousands more watch it on TV . Jamaican athletes believe Champs is vital in preparing them for bigger events like the . reason is the establishment of US - style college athletic programmes in Jamaica . A former Jamaican sprinter , Dennis Johnson , is widely regarded as the of Jamaica ? s success in athletics . In the 1960s , he won an athletics scholarship to study and train at a university in California . When he left , his dream was to use what he had learned there to develop a similar athletics in Jamaica . The sports programme he set up at the University of Technology in Kingston in 1971 gives young athletes the opportunity to study and in their home country .
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