Cuthbert - From Track to Radio

Jamaica’s Juliet Cuthbert is among a select group of athletes who have five Olympic Games to their credit, from her selection as a member of the national sprint relay squad for the 1980 Moscow Olympics to her last appearance in the 1996 Atlanta Games.

However, with ‘only’ three Olympic medals to show - two individual and one relay – and just three relay but no individual medals from three outdoor World Championships (NB. individual 1997 World Indoor 200m silver), no wonder she has so many regrets about her 18 years at the international level, as even by her own admission, she certainly under-achieved.

Cuthbert who most memorably took the individual 100m and 200m silver medals at the Barcelona Olympic Games in 1992, hung up her spikes in 1999 after several injuries and eventually stumbled into sports broadcasting, and aims to leave an indelible mark in her new career.

After working as a part-time agent and then as the marketing and promotions manager for a Jamaican sports goods firm, quite by chance she drifted into full-time radio and is now co-host of a daily 3 hour sports talk show on KLAS FM in Jamaica.

Cuthbert has certainly already made an impact as since becoming a part of the show last year, the programme which is entitled ‘Scoreboard’ has won two national press awards, and surprisingly for someone who got into radio by accident, she says the transition from track to radio was easy.

"I found it very easy, because I talk a lot, and I am a 'people person', and I think I gel well with people, so it was very easy.“

Having said that though, the early part of her retirement from athletics was anything but easy, as she found it hard to adjust to life after track and field as it was like starting life all over again.

"It’s not that easy really to get into the working world, to leave something that you did on your own (track and field) to go to something where people control you. That is why I am determined to succeed in radio, because (like athletics) you are able to be yourself and set your own limits."

Cuthbert of course misses track and field plus those regular treks around the big cities in Europe doing the Grand Prix circuit...."I miss the sport, I miss travelling, I miss the meets in Europe, I miss Zurich, Cologne and those places, I have great memories of all the meets, especially Brussels."

Cuthbert is a determined woman, and whereas injury destroyed what should have been the best part of her career immediately after Barcelona, she doesn't see anything getting in her way this time around, and the media landscape can only be the better for her presence.