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KINGSTON, Jamaica : Glen Mills has resigned after 22 years as head of the Jamaican national track and field team but he will remain coach of the Usain Bolt's Racers Track Club.
Mills plans to stop working with the national team so he can concentrate more time on coaching the club team which includes Olympic triple gold medallist Usain Bolt, the Jamaica Observer reported Friday.
"I feel that after being head coach for every world championship team, except the inaugural one and the one in 2003, and every Olympic Games since 1988, that's a good run, and the crowning glory in Beijing," Mills said. "It's good to quit while you're ahead."
Mills made a name for himself after Bolt won the 100 metres and 200 metres in world record times of 9.69 and 19.30 seconds.
Howard Aris, president of the Jamaica Amateur Athletics Association (JAAA), said the announcement did not come as a surprise.
"As far back as five or six years ago when I took over as president it has been discussed," Aris told a Jamaican sports radio show.
Mills replaced the late Herb McKenley as national team head coach in 1987.
He said he as pleased Jamaica's track and field had achieved it highest level of recognition after winning 24 medals at the last two major global events -- the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008 and the IAAF World Championships in Berlin earlier this year.
Jamaican athletes won six gold medals in Beijing and seven gold in Berlin. Jamaica won a total of 33 Olympic medals under Mills' guidance.
Mills considering retiring nine years ago after the Sydney Olympics because he felt was time then for someone younger to take over.
"I took the decision then, that it was time to allow younger people to take up the mantle, but the then administration ask me to continue for a couple more years so that somebody could be groomed to take over," he said.
- AFP/vm
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