Jermaine Shand

Jermaine hails from Jamaica.

He was an athlete until university.

His forte was sprints and he excelled in100m and 200m

In due time he was spotted by his coach who saw a potential talent of coaching in him

So he introduced him to learn coaching.

Then Jermaine moved into coaching a school team and then joined the national coaching team in Jamaica.

A few young athletes from India travelled to Jamaica to improve their style of running their specific event. There they met Jermaine and invited him to continue training them in India.

Subsequently he travelled to India and is now coaching budding athletes.

One of his pupils, Aryana Kadam, is a national gold medalist of India in the 200m

I was watching Aryana Kadam during the training of his athletes

They had multiple excercises for building up their bodies for athletics besides actual running

He says “it’s not only running , but also looking after and development of the bodies . In a week I give them two days only for the excercises, and remaining days for running .”

His athletes have a good style for running . They specialise in the sprints .

I asked him “why do only a few Indian athletes win at the International level ?”

“It’s because they train only to win medals initially without an overall development as I recommend . As a result they fade away when it really matters . It’s not only training to win against other international athletes but to strive to do even better every time, against stronger and faster athletes .

He has been training Aryana from the age of 12 years . He has now grown up to be a strong athletes. He has competed at an international meet in France .

He recommends “ as youngsters being trained for athletics, they need to be nurtured until they grow up and continue to develop.”

Sponsorship for such athletes goes a long way .

Let’s hope there are more coaches like Jermaine to take our young athletes to the next level.