I’ve always been fascinated by a winning sprinter’s ability to literally dust everybody. And they were always Caribbean women, sometimes West African. I then started to wonder, who is it exactly that they were racing against? Was it their opponent to their left or their right? Was their opponent something from their past? Something from their environment? Was it something deeper, like surpassing the far reaches of colonialism? Or was it even simpler… they were racing against themselves? I remember liking that reason the most.
I had stumbled upon a track meet on TV and couldn’t help but watch in disbelief. I said to myself, "you gotta be incredibly fast if other sprinters that are also incredibly fast are amazed at how fast you are.” I had no idea who these athletes were, but their speed told me that they knew who they were. It was as if they emerged from a different world, a world made just for them. I would marvel at how relieved they looked after they’d won. What if winning meant something different to them than it did to us?
