Bahamas Golden Girls: Our Sydney 2000 Relay Gold

Some stories we should tell our children every year, and this is one of them. On 30 September 2000, in Sydney, Australia, five Bahamian women brought home Olympic gold in the women’s 4×100 metres relay. Back home they became known by one name: the Golden Girls.

Who were the Golden Girls?

The Bahamas Olympic Committee lists the team as Pauline Davis-Thompson, Debbie Ferguson-McKenzie, Eldece Clarke, Sevatheda Fynes and Chandra Sturrup. In the Sydney final, Sevatheda Fynes ran the first leg, Chandra Sturrup the second, Pauline Davis-Thompson the third, and Debbie Ferguson ran the anchor. Eldece Clarke-Lewis ran in the earlier rounds and helped carry the team to the final, so she is a gold medallist too.

The road to Sydney started in Atlanta

The gold did not come out of nowhere. At the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, the same group took silver behind the United States, running 42.14 seconds. Olympedia’s official results credit Eldece Clarke, Chandra Sturrup, Sevatheda Fynes, Pauline Davis and Debbie Ferguson with that medal.

Then in August 1999, at the World Championships in Seville, Spain, Fynes, Sturrup, Davis-Thompson and Ferguson won gold in 41.92 seconds. World Athletics reported it as the first time The Bahamas had won that event at the World Championships, and the time was a new national record and the fastest in the world that year.

The race itself

In Sydney, the United States team, led by Marion Jones, was expected to fight Jamaica for the gold. The Bahamas had other plans. Our girls ran the fastest time of the first round, and in the final, Sevatheda Fynes put The Bahamas in front from the start. Every baton change went clean.

By the last leg, Debbie Ferguson was out front, with Jamaica’s great Merlene Ottey chasing her. Ferguson held on and brought the baton home first. The Bahamas won in 41.95 seconds, ahead of Jamaica in 42.13 and the United States in 42.20.

The Olympic news service wrote that the win brought jubilation back home and that, with a population of about 270,000 at the time, The Bahamas became the smallest nation ever to win an Olympic gold medal in a team event.

Why it still matters

Look at the names again: a small country of islands beat the biggest sprinting nations on earth, on the biggest stage there is. They did it as a team, over years, through a silver, a world title and then Olympic gold. The Bahamas Olympic Committee counts the Golden Girls among its legends.

Every young Bahamian lacing up spikes in a school track meet today is running on a road these women helped pave. That is something to be proud of.

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Know a Bahamian who needs to see this? Share it with them today.

Sources

Olympics.com (Sydney 2000 results and Olympic news); Olympedia; World Athletics; Bahamas Olympic Committee; Wikipedia.

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By Michael Elijah Muhammad Clare. Pictures in this story are AI-generated illustrations and do not show the athletes.