By Yavuz Yavuz in Konya
The stands at Konya’s newly inaugurated athletics track and field erupted in jubilation as Gina Bass crossed the finish line, carrying the baton for women’s 4x100 relay final. The 43.83 written on the digital timer meant that the previous national record of The Gambia has been lowered by more than one second. This was the first time the team of Bass, Maimouna Jallow, Wurrie Njadoe and Ola Buwaro ran together and what they lacked in collective training, they covered it with a remarkable display of talent and composure in clocking the national record.
The cheers and claps of the Gambians rooting for their four sprinters on the track also combined with a sigh of relief as the record escaped falling prey to the measuring irregularities that caused a number of national and Games records to be disregarded in the first three days of the Islamic Solidarity Games.
PROMISING SPRINTING FUTURE
It was right after this, when they won their second gold medal in two days, that Athletics Podium had the opportunity for a brief chat with the frontrunners of the Gambian wave in the shifting tide of African sprinting. Gambian sprint pool is indeed a very promising one and the relay races are impeccable demonstrations of it.
The previous national record of 44.97 was also set this year when Gina Bass, Jawneh Nyimasata, Maimouna Jallow and Fatou Sowe won bronze to carry The Gambia on the African Championships’ 4x100 podium for the first time in 38 years. “With Gina we are always proud. She is supportive and we want to help her as well.” said Jallow in defining the chemistry among the country’s sprinting generation.
The Western African country has tracks in Bakau on the Atlantic coast, which hosts the home trainings of Gambian athletes. Also, Senegal, the only neighbouring country with a land border that surrounds The Gambia on all other sides, hosts the Gambian athletes’ trainings while they also spend part of the season in the USA. It is under these conditions, that emerged a group of runners who put Gambia on the map of African sprinting.
BASS FACTOR
Gina Bass, who shone the brightest in Konya by also winning another gold in women’s 200m race, is the most decorated Gambian athlete ever, internationally. She first made the headlines in 2016, when she won bronze medal by clocking a national record of 22.92 in women’s 200m of the African Championships and became the first female athlete of The Gambia to win a senior continental medal. The same year, she also became Gambia’s first female athlete to take part in the Olympic Games through securing qualification for Rio 2016.
While she failed to make it out of heats at the Olympics in 2016, she won her country’s first ever African Games title in athletics in 200 meters three years later, in 2019, with a time of 22.58 –again, a national record– and became the first ever Gambian world finalist in Doha the same season. This year, she continued spearheading the leap forward in Gambian sprinting by winning the first ever African Championships gold medal in 100m in Saint Pierre, defeating Niger’s rising star Aminatou Seyni.
Gambian line-up includes a number of other promising sprinters, including Ola Buwaro, who became the country’s first ever continental junior titlist in a women’s track event, by winning the 200m in 2017. While Buwaro’s favourite race is the 200m, names like Bass and Njadoe with faster recorded times put a fierce competition before her, which she hopes would raise up her levels in a quest to represent The Gambia in the distance.
HIGH-NOTE ENDING
Aminatou Seyni’s fourth place finish in the 200m race of this year’s World Championships, and the success of other athletes such as Ferdinand Omanyala of Kenya in the 100m or Zambia’s Muzala Samukonga in the 400m signal a significant transformation in the realm of African sprinting. Gambian female sprinters have been a crucial addendum in this changing landscape.
“It’s motivating for us to step it up as well. I believe that in Gambia we have a lot of talented people,” said Wurrie Njadoe. “The goal is to horn this talent and improve on it, so that we can excel more and compete in bigger events as well.”
Gambians closed the season on that note and, returned to recuperate and prepare for what the coming season has prepared for them. “It is all about believing in yourself,” Gina Bass says, “and to train hard”. They have every reason to believe in themselves and there is an exciting season ahead to see what the next step is for the Gambian sprinters.
