(A) NEW JERSEY TRACK ATHLETEAND (B) OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALISTREMIND THE WORLD:IT’S DOMINICA, NOT THE DOMINICAN REPUBIC.

BY ELLIOTT DENMAN
Maria Paul is my clubmate.
She’s the tall, always-smiling pride and joy of the Shore AC Masters team, a state champion on the track, and occasional shot putter, too.
So when Maria’s smiling over the latest round of Olympic
events, I’m smiling, too.
Monday’s conversation went this way:
Said Maria: “They’re always asking me, ‘why don’t I talk Spanish?’
“So I ask them back, ‘why should I?’
“And they say, ‘but I thought everybody from the Dominican
 Republic spoke Spanish.’
“And I tell them I’m from Dominica, not the Dominican Republic, and they speak English in Dominica.
“And they say, ‘are you telling me they’re different places?’
“And I tell them ‘yes-yes-yes, they certainly are different places, very different.’
“And they say, ‘well I never knew.’ “
  My friend Maria will have to enlighten the world a lot more from here on out.
 One more of the Olympic Games’ most enduring values is
 this: There’s nothing better than an Olympic gold medal to teach a geography lesson.
And triple jumper Thea LaFond, representing Dominica,  turned herself into a world-class teacher at Stade de France last Saturday night.
By triple-bounding meters 15.02 meters/49 feet, 3 ½ inches, the 30- year-old LaFond, not only inscribed her name in the golden list of  super Olympic achievers, but put the name of her home island-nation into those archives forever and ever, too.
 “Oh, I am sure there will be a big parade for her when she gets back home,” said my teammate Maria.
“People on Dominica always like parades.
“Any time they have a happy occasion, they have a parade.”
 Actually, Maria wasn’t born on Dominica.  She first saw the light of day in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands.  She then spent many of her growing-up days in Dominica, before coming to the U.S., which doesn’t make her any less of a Dominica ambassador.
    Thea LaFond had some similar travels.
     She came to the U.S. as a kid to build a better life, too.
    The LaFonds settled into Maryland and she attended John F. Kennedy High School in Silver Spring, just outside Washington, DC, and then the University of Maryland in College Park.
  She’d been a promising young dancer until lessons became too costly.
   But all that classical footwork would pay off – big-big time – once she discovered track and field – and the horizontal jumping arts.
   Under the coaching tutelage of Aaron Goodson – who is now her husband - she improved by leaps and bounds, but incrementally.
   She’d been a star collegian for the Maryland Terps and made her debut on the global stage at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
She didn’t make it out of the Rio qualifying rounds, but upped to 12th at the 2021 Tokyo Games.   And when she hopped-stepped-jumped to the gold medal at the 2024 World Indoor Championships in Glasgow, it was clear she was ready for much bigger things in Paris.
  She spanned 14.32/46-11 ¾ in the opening round of the finals and improved to 15.02 second time down the runway.
  With heavy rains in the offing, Gadson, nearby in the stands, told her, “you have to do something big now.”
   It went down that way exactly.
   The 15.02 would stand as the gold medal mark.
   And so there was simultaneously joy in Roseau, her home town in Dominica; College Park, home of the Terps,
and Long Branch, NJ, Maria’s hometown.
   The U. of Maryland track program – underfunded compared to its Big 10 rivals – once had to be rescued by an alumni appeal.
   There coulda-woulda-shoulda have been big Olympic news for Terp track 44 years ago – until then-President Jimmy Carter’s boycott edict kept Renaldo Nehemiah, the world record-breaking 110 high hurdler, out of the Moscow Games.
  But Marylanders’ Olympic track ties continue.
  Terp head coach Andrew Valmon, perhaps the greatest 4x400 relay leadoff man in track history, collected gold medals in the 1988 Seoul and 1992 Barcelona Games.  And in 2012,
at London, Valmon made more history as the first gold medalist to return to the Games as head coach of the USA men’s team.
   Back in New Jersey, ambassador/teacher Maria was being called up for more geography lessons:
   “Dominica is a very small place in the Caribbean. We don’t even have an international airport.  They’ve been talking about building one since I was a kid and they still haven’t done it.
  “I want to tell you, though, it’s a beautiful place. So they call it ‘The Nature Island.’
  “After this gold medal, I think a lot more people will find out about it, and want to visit.”
   Dominica lacks a proper track, too.
   As the new Olympic champion put it, “I’m really hoping this medal lights a fire under all the government officials to get that done.”
   And sometime soon.  
   Maybe, just maybe.