2008 was an amazing and challenging year for many in this country and across the world.

Who can forget our success in Beijing - 11 medals, including six gold ones, and the rise of Usain Bolt from a talented athlete to a worldwide superstar? Three hundred million Americans might think that the hero of Beijing was the swimmer, Michael Phelps, but for the other 6 billion people on the planet, including the 1.5 billion in China, that person is the lanky sprinter from Sherwood Content in Trelawny.

I don't think Jamaicans have ever been more proud of any of our sons and daughters, many of them from some of Jamaica's most depressed communities, who started out with so little but have given this country so much. Come to think of it, the parish of Trelawny that gets so little has given this country Veronica Campbell-Brown, Omar Brown, Michael Frater, and Usain Bolt. Go figure.

But if track and field set us on an unparalleled emotional high, football took us to new lows. The thing is, it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure that bringing Rene Simoes back to oversee the national programme was a monumental mistake, so why Captain Burrell didn't see this, only God knows.

The greatest irony

The greatest irony about all this is that our track and field athletes - and our netballers - get so little from corporate sponsors and produce so much and our footballers get so much and give back so little.

But 2008 was not only about the high and lows of our athletics. We also hit new highs in our crime rates and new lows in our politics. The Bruce Golding - led JLP had come to power in late 2007 promising to curb Jamaica's burgeoning crime rates; to date, the only thing they seem to be able to curb is the hope that many Jamaicans had that someone would be able to at least come up with a workable hypothesis on how to keep the criminals at bay. Murders are at an all-time high.

The People's National Party had its national conference where some Jamaicans, including myself, hoped that we would have seen the election of new dynamic leadership for the party to lead it into the future. What we got was the re-election of Portia Simpson-Miller and, well, history awaits the debacles that lie ahead.

New lows

The JLP took their annual conference to new lows when one of the party's supporters was shot dead inside the National Arena, minutes before the Prime Minister was supposed to speak on new crime measures. It would be laughable if it weren't so damned tragic.

Kern Spencer. What do I say about him? The case is before the courts so I can't say much.

Outside these shores Barack Obama created history by becoming the first non-white American to become president of the United States. On his way there he inspired tens of millions, and, perhaps, started the process of returning credibility to the United States and dampening the hatred for the country that had grown to new levels during eight years of George W. Bush.

Obama

During a long and intense campaign that brought to the fore the best and worst of America, from the silliness of Sarah 'I can see Russia from my house' Palin to the ignorant, racist, and insular underbelly of Middle America. In the end though, the country seemed to have put its best foot forward and now we wait to see where Obama will lead us.

George Bush may have been the worst US president ever and will be remembered mostly for his verbal clumsiness, his ridiculous foreign policies and the never-ending war in Iraq, but the image of the 43rd US president that will remain with me for as long as I live came at the very end of his reign.

Cat-like reflexes

In dodging a pair of shoes thrown at him by a reporter on his last visit to Iraq, Bush exhibited cat-like reflexes that belied the usual stumbling and bumbling that characterised his leadership over the past eight years. It was funny but poignant, in that the incident served as a microcosm of how the world viewed him and his presidency. I am just glad to see him gone. The world couldn't take much more.

I just wish the Olympics came around every year and that our athletes would always be this good. Because, for all the problems in the world,- the wars, the crime, the poverty, Mugabe, - for that one week in August when Bolt, Fraser, VCB, Walker and others took on and conquered the rest of the world, I had never seen Jamaica happier.

Happy New Year everyone!

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