The Bahamian Golden Girls in Sydney (© Getty Images)
When Pauline Davis-Thompson took the baton from Chandra Sturrup and tore around the top bend of Stadium Australia on the closing night of track action at the Sydney Olympics, the seasoned Bahamian sprinter only had one thing in mind.
As she reflected in the aftermath of the momentous women’s 4x100m final on 30 September 2000, now 25 years ago: “We had to show them how David took down Goliath. The population of the United States is six billion. Ours is 270,00.”
Davis-Thompson more than did her bit for the Davids of The Bahamas on that vital third leg, stealing a march of some four metres on Nanceen Perry before the Goliaths of the USA could unleash Marion Jones on the anchor leg.
Aged 34 and competing in her fifth and final Olympic Games, Davis-Thompson gained a further couple of metres with her slick exchange to Debbie Ferguson, who set off down the home straight with the wide-eyed look of a woman possessed – laser-focused on gold. Or so it seemed.
“Actually, I was just running scared,” the 24-year-old ‘baby’ of the Bahamian quartet later confessed. “I knew she was coming, and coming fast.”
The she in question was Jones, unbeatable in the 100m and 200m in Sydney, from which she was subsequently disqualified for anti-doping violations.
The ultimately tainted Jones could only claw her way up from fourth into third as the fear-fuelled Ferguson held off the veteran Jamaican Merlene Ottey to claim the sweetest of victories by a margin of two metres.
Debbie Ferguson anchors The Bahamas to Olympic 4x100m victory in Sydney (© AFP / Getty Images)
Ahead of Cathy Freeman’s appearance in the final of the women’s 4x400m, the 110,000-strong crowd roared in appreciation of a triumph that was every bit as stunning as that of the indigenous Australian in the individual 400m the previous Monday.
The giant scoreboard in Stadium Australia flashed up confirmation:
1. Bahamas 41.95
2. Jamaica 42.13
3. USA 42.20
The tiny archipelago with less than half the population of Washington DC had taken down the mighty USA – and the established sprinting stronghold of their proud Caribbean neighbours.
It was the first Olympic track and field success for The Bahamas.
A quarter of a century on, the four women who wore the blue vest that night – Savatheda Fynes (or Fynes-Coke, as she has become), Sturrup, Davis-Thompson and Ferguson (now Ferguson-McKenzie) – plus Eldece Clarke (Clarke-Lewis), who ran in the heats, are still lauded in their homeland as The Golden Girls.
They were feted with six days of national celebrations when they returned to The Bahamas, and each rewarded with a governmental gift of 20,000 sq ft plots of land overlooking the Caribbean.
Pauline Davis-Thompson, Sevatheda Fynes, Chandra Sturrup and Debbie Ferguson of The Bahamas celebrate in Sydney (© AFP / Getty Images)
Hard upbringing
For Davis-Thompson, the elder stateswoman of the squad, it was a true rags to riches triumph.
Raised in the Bain Town ghetto on the southern outskirts of Nassau, she was the eldest of six siblings in a house without running water or electricity.
The young Pauline Davis learned to run, barefooted, dodging local bullies while carrying a bucket of water in each hand on the way back from the nearest government tap.
As a raw 16-year-old, she was selected in The Bahamas team for the inaugural World Athletics Championships in Helsinki in 1983.
A year later, she made her Olympic debut in Los Angeles, reaching the semifinals of the 100m and 200m and partnering Clarke-Lewis in the 4x100m team that placed sixth in the final.
Then came a call from the US, rescuing Davis from the struggle of trying to make her way as an international sprinter while juggling part-time jobs working in McDonald’s and as a hotel receptionist to pay for her college education.
In moving to the University of Alabama, she joined the collegiate sporting powerhouse known as the Crimson Tide, immortalised as serial winners in the Steely Dan song Deacon Blues.
It was a supreme twist of irony that the Bahamian Golden Girls who turned the tide of four successive US victories in the Olympic women’s 4x100m relay were all products of the NCAA system. Fynes attended Michigan State University, Sturrup Norfolk State University, Ferguson the University of Georgia and Clarke-Lewis Hampton University.
As a five-woman squad, their Olympic success – represented in the Museum of World Athletics (MOWA) by an autographed Bahamian post office first day cover, kindly donated by Davis-Thompson – was five years in the making.
Debbie Ferguson receives the baton from Pauline Davis-Thompson during the Olympic 4x100m final in Sydney (© AFP / Getty Images)
Ultimately, individual gold
Fourth at the 1995 World Championships in Gothenburg, they led at the halfway stage of the 1996 Olympic final in Atlanta before having to settle for silver after Inger Miller and Gwen Torrence powered the mighty USA to victory.
After the disappointment of sixth place in the 1997 world final in Athens, the Bahamians found their Midas touch in the heat of Seville at the 1999 World Athletics Championships.
Fynes-Coke, Sturrup, Davis-Thompson and Ferguson-McKenzie combined to crack both the opposition and the 42-second barrier, prevailing in 41.92 ahead of France and Jamaica, with the US out of the medal frame in fourth.
“The Americans were saying that was a fluke,” Davis-Thompson reflected, after the follow up success in Sydney, “so my Golden Girl sisters and I worked so hard to achieve that Olympic gold medal on behalf of our country.”
That hard work ultimately also yielded Olympic 200m gold for Davis-Thompson from Sydney, following Jones’ retrospective disqualification – to set alongside the world 400m silver she won in Gothenburg in 1995 and world indoor 200m silver and bronze.
Fynes-Coke gained a world bronze at 100m in Athens in 1997, while Ferguson-McKenzie finished her career with a world 200m gold from 2001 and world and Olympic bronzes from the same event.
Collectively, however, their deeds have inspired a new generation of world-beating Bahamian golden girls: notably Shaunae Miller-Uibo, the two-time Olympic 400m champion, and Devynne Charlton, the two-time world indoor 60m hurdles champion.
“I remember watching the Golden Girls as a four-year-old and thinking: ‘That’s what I want to do’,” Charlton confided.
Now her coaching team at the University of Kentucky happens to include Ferguson-McKenzie, the woman who completed the Olympic Goliath-slaying mission for the Caribbean Davids in Sydney a quarter of a century ago.
Simon Turnbull for World Athletics Heritage
