Not perhaps in the number of Jersey football teams playing in the Jeremie Cup (because they can’t afford it), but certainly in the Duquemin household, after 16-year-old Zane won the intermediate boys’ discus at the Sainsbury’s English Schools Track and Field Championships.
That earned him high praise from no less a source than former Olympic gold medallist Daley Thompson.
With Jamie Stevenson and Lauren Thérin also up there with the best of British, we seem to have some excellent ‘chuckers’ in the Island at the moment, with Zane’s younger sister, Shadine, also likely to join them.
As someone who has never kept a newspaper cutting about my own successes (or failures) with the exception of a page from the JEP 30-plus years ago, which said: ‘Scrum-half Chris Luke then scored a match-winning try’, I would hope that the Duquemins have cut out and kept Daley Thomson’s quotes from Monday’s paper, which include: ‘Zane put in a tremendous effort, thoroughly deserving of his gold medal as well as the title of 2008 English Schools Championship under-17 boys intermediate champion.’
Memories – and cuttings like that – are a rarity in most people’s lives, and even if Zane never picks up a discus again, the championship and Thompson’s words are to be fully savoured both now and in years to come because no-one can ever take the words, or this year’s title, away from him.
