Biography of GC Foster published

Other than the fact that Jamaica's only sports college was named after him, not much is known about Gerald Claude Eugene Foster.

For many, Jamaica's track and field history began in 1948 at the London Olympic Games where Arthur Wint and Herb McKenley began to write their own significant legacies.

It could be argued that G.C. Foster was the man who started it all, as an athlete in the 1900s, and later as a coach who played a key part in Jamaica's schoolboy sports, and as coach and physiotherapist at the 1934 British Empire Games and 1948 Olympics.

"In some ways, I don't think he was valued enough, and when we look back now at his role in coaching schoolboy athletes; whatever school he was at, had a very good chance at winning Champs that year," said Diane Shaw, Foster's granddaughter, who on Wednesday launched a book on Foster's life at Football Factory in Kingston.

The book is called Remembering GC Foster and was edited by Arnold Bertram, who has written several books on Jamaica's rich athletics

history.

G.C. Foster unsuccessfully bid to represent Jamaica at the 1908 Olympics because Jamaica was not yet a member of the Olympic charter.

Shaw began research for the book decades ago interviewing persons such as the late Barclay Ewart, who benefitted from Foster's tutelage while he was at Jamaica College in the 1950s; the late Keith Gardener and Mauricio Ventura.

Shaw admitted that while she knew her grandfather well while growing up, she discovered new things about him during her research.

"He had a passion for excellence and was a very endearing man. He also had a great sense of humour. There was a lot of laughter. He never got tired, he could go on into the night massaging people until sweat poured down his face," she said.