We all cheered like mad when Gavin Lee marched in a smart blazer into the City of Manchester stadium during the opening ceremony last week.
In front of him was a bearer with a banner displaying the name of his country: Montserrat, the dot in the Leeward Islands that suffered a series of volcanic eruptions that devastated the island from 1995 onwards. He was carrying his nation’s flag because there was no one else to carry it. He was the Montserrat team in its entirety. ”I wasn’t supposed to be the only athlete,” he says. ”There were supposed to be three other guys. I guess they couldn’t make it.”
The idea was that the four would compete in the men’s 4x400m relay. But it was not to be. Next time Lee intends to ensure that the others come with him.
The team did, however, hang on to Stephen Mendes, secretary of the Montserrat Amateur Athletic Association and team manager. He knew last Friday that the omens for Lee were not good. ”I’ve checked out the other competitors and they are all taller than him,” he says.
Lee is a high jumper but only measures about 1,75m. The average high jumper is about as tall as a pole vault pole so Lee was up against it as he prepared for the qualifying rounds on Sunday. But he knew he had plenty of natural spring in him. ”I started high-jumping about seven years ago. I’m very small but I found that when I was playing basketball I could almost dunk the ball because I could jump.”
After the volcanic eruptions, about two thirds of Montserrat’s population fled and Lee is a typical exile, getting home for only three weeks a year to see his family. He is studying biology and making use of the athletics facilities at the University of Delaware.
He trained hard but probably knew he was not going to break the world record (2,45m — about one-and-a-third times his own height). But he thought he could beat his personal best of 2,08m.
The British love the little man and the crowd did its best to will him over the bar. But it was not to be. He managed only 1,95m (which is still 20cm higher than the top of his head; put a line on a wall and see if you could do it). — Guardian Newspapers