![\"Jamaican](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/6a6697d75b13582b4652ebf7.jpg\")
<\/p>\nAfter a restless night in the athletes\u2019 village, during which he had got up to change his kit six or seven times, read the Bible and ultimately been tied to his bed by his Trinidad and Tobago teammates, Hasely Crawford breezed into the call room ahead of the men\u2019s 100m final at the 1976 Olympic Games, singing at the top of his voice.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon Quarrie turned to me and said, \u2018You\u2019re crazy\u2019,\u201d Crawford recalled in Neil Duncanson\u2019s classic television documentary The Fastest Men on Earth. \u201cI said, \u2018You think I\u2019m crazy! See how crazy when I go out there with you!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Halfway down the home straight, Quarrie \u2013 running in lane four \u2013 caught sight of Valeriy Borzov in front of him. \u201cI thought, \u2018Oh, no! He\u2019s not going to win again?\u2019\u201d he later recalled.<\/p>\n
In Munich four years previously, the Soviet sprinter had achieved the 100m-200m double, prompting the New York Times headline: \u201cThe Fastest Human is a Commie.\u201d<\/p>\n
Quarrie had been in Borzov\u2019s 200m semifinal in Munich but pulled a hamstring and was wheeled away on a stretcher. Four years before that, the smooth-striding, placid-natured Jamaican had been selected for the 4x100m relay as a 17-year-old, but was injured in training and missed the Mexico Olympic Games of 1968.<\/p>\n
In the 100m final in Montreal, Quarrie shifted up a gear and caught Borzov. \u201cIn going by him, I figured I got it won,\u201d he said, recalling the glint of golden promise that July day in 1976. \u201cBut then I saw Hasely…\u201d<\/p>\n
Running in lane one, Crawford had stolen a march on the field. Quarrie made one last effort, but as he lunged for the line he looked across to see Crawford raising his right arm in triumph. His Caribbean rival prevailed by 0.01: 10.06 to 10.07. Quarrie\u2019s Olympic curse had struck again.<\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t last much longer.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Jamaican sprinter Don Quarrie<\/p>\n
In the 200m final two days later, Quarrie was a class apart. Drawn in lane two, with Italy\u2019s Pietro Mennea inside him, he sailed around the curve in his customary graceful fashion, pulling a stride clear of his closest pursuer, Millard Hampton.<\/p>\n
The 20-year-old US sprinter reduced the gap down the home straight, but Quarrie had the strength to resist his challenge, crossing the line in 20.23. Hampton was second in 20.26, with his 17-year-old US teammate Dwayne Evans third in 20.43 and Mennea fourth in 20.54.<\/p>\n
Wearing the bright yellow Jamaican team tracksuit he has kindly donated to the Museum of World Athletics, together with a 1976 Olympic participant\u2019s pin badge, 25-year-old Donald O\u2019Reilly Quarrie \u2013 the pride of his native Kingston and beyond \u2013 finally got his hands on Olympic gold.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I crossed the finish line I remember thinking Jamaica will be happy, especially after the disappointment of 1972 and the build-up of me being the favourite for Montreal,\u201d he recalled in an interview with Sports Jamaica. \u201cI was happy that I could win for the country.\u201d<\/p>\n
And Jamaica was happy for him.<\/p>\n
A bronze statue of Quarrie was erected at the entrance to the National Stadium. A school was named after him in eastern Kingston. And reggae artists Bongo Herman, and Joe Gibbs and The Guerrillas, both struck up tracks in his honour. \u201cTribute to Donald Quarrie\u201d celebrates how the Kingston boy \u201cbeat them all, up at Montreal.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Don](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/6a6698035b13582b4652ebfa.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Don Quarrie donates his 1976 Olympic tracksuit to MOWA<\/p>\n
Not that anyone noticed at the time, but there was a fleeting moment when Quarrie missed a beat in that 200m final in Montreal: when Crawford, outside him in lane five, pulled up injured after 50 metres.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had an excellent start,\u201d Quarrie recalled. \u201cI got out well. But I backed off a bit as I saw Hasely jump up. It was a reflex action, that pause. I think that\u2019s why I did not come off the curve better.\u201d<\/p>\n
He came off well enough, though, before drawing on the strength that had long been a hallmark of his sprinting. That endurance, he suggested in an interview in World Athletics\u2019 Legends of Athletics series, had been forged in the summer holiday after he took up sprinting in his second year at Camperdown High School.<\/p>\n
\u201cI spent my whole summer getting up and running three or four miles, up in the hills or on the beach,\u201d Quarrie recalled. \u201cThat made me so much stronger that once I got into the High School Championships, I more or less dominated it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Quarrie\u2019s potent blend of speed and strength took him to two further Olympic medals: 200m bronze behind Mennea and Britain\u2019s Allan Wells in Moscow in 1980, and 4x100m relay silver in Los Angeles in 1984.<\/p>\n
In a long career of sustained sprinting excellence, he racked up six Commonwealth Games gold medals: 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay as a 19-year-old in Edinburgh in 1970, 100m and 200m in Christchurch in 1974, and 100m in Edmonton in 1978.<\/p>\n
The sprint and relay treble Quarrie achieved at the 1971 Pan American Games in Cali included a 19.8 200m, equalling Tommie Smith\u2019s hand-timed world record. His automatic time of 19.86 was just 0.03 outside Smith\u2019s winning time from the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City.<\/p>\n
Having spent several years mixing it with the best of the US as a collegiate sprint star at the University of Nebraska and the University of Southern California, Quarrie also claimed a share of the 100m world record when he clocked 9.9 at Modesto in May 1976 \u2013 two months before striking Olympic gold in Montreal.<\/p>\n
It was one of nine hand-timed 9.9 performances to be ratified as a world record, alongside those by US sprinters Jim Hines, Ronnie Ray Smith, Charlie Greene, Eddie Hart, Ray Robinson, Steve Williams and Harvey Glance, and Cuba\u2019s Silvio Leonard. Quarrie\u2019s was the last of them.<\/p>\n
Simon Turnbull for World Athletics<\/p>\n
![\"MOWA](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/6885f79e982e117f1338cb26.jpg\")
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