Glen Mills, Founder-President and Head Coach of Racers Track Club, is to be honoured this Saturday 3 November by the University of the West Indies at its Mona campus in Jamaica. The university will confer on him the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws.
Mills has been engaged in athletics coaching for over forty years — starting as an apprentice to H McD Messam, the coach of Don Quarrie, at his alma mater Camperdown High School in the 1960s. He has coached at all levels of the Jamaican track and field system, from the high school championships and grassroots youth club competitions to the national level, serving as Jamaica’s National Coach for several Olympics.
He is the coach of the two fastest men of all time over both 100 and 200 metres: Usain Bolt and Yohan Blake.
His most recent success came last summer at the London Olympics where, of the eleven members of Racers Track Club who were members of the Jamaican team, seven ended as medalists — sharing ten medals among them: four gold, three silver and three bronze. His athletes won five of the six available medals in the men’s individual short sprints: including an unprecedented clean sweep in the 200 metres.
Dubbed “the Guru” by the cognoscenti of track and field, Mills’s international successes go back as far as the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles where he coached 19-year old schoolboy Raymond Stewart to a sixth-place finish in the 100 metres. He also coached Kim Collins of St Kitts and Nevis to a World Championships gold medal in the 100 metres in 2003 in Paris.
