Why Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, with three Olympic golds, loves the Bollywood song ‘Nimbooda Nimbooda’

Fraser-Pryce mouths the words and the interluding drum-beats, dancing along merrily to the Ismail Darbar-Kavita Krishnamurti ditty ‘Nimbooda, Nimbooda, Nimbooda’ from Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam. “I had an ethnic Indian classmate back in school, and she wore this saree (iconic blue skirt ghagra) and danced to the Nimbooda song on stage. We never knew the meaning of the words, but I keep singing that song and have never forgotten it,” she chuckles, enacting the Aishwarya Rai moves that she remembers from the Christmassy school spectacle with confetti and a blue swirl.

While Fraser-Pryce’s school was where her sprinting dream took off, her neighbourhood (“We lived in this big yard with relatives and cousins,” she says), knew she was meant to achieve greatness when she was a mere 3 or 4. “There was this earthquake in Jamaica, and when the tremors hit, I began running home that was about 300 metres away. Even in those surreal circumstances, with everything shaking, there were people who stood along the street and screamed ‘Run Merlene Run’,” she remembers. Merlene Ottey took silvers at Atlanta 1996 and Sydney 2000, and that was similar to a PT Usha-refrain in India.

Shelly-Ann was a second-born, with an older and younger brother, but the only one who took up her mother’s unfinished sprints dream. “It’s always the daughter who takes up the legacy, doesn’t she?” she says. “Mom got pregnant and delivered my older brother, while still a teen and had to drop out of school. Two years later, I was born, then after another two, another brother, so she poured everything into making me a great runner,” Fraser-Pryce says.

Sometimes ambition was overwhelming. “Because if I didn’t follow the drills – felt lazy and ran just 100 out of 400 metres – she would punish me. No weekends, no going out. But she drilled in that Track & Field was our only way out of poverty. And I saw why she didn’t want me to end up like her,” she recalls. It was at her first World Championships at Osaka in 2007, that she witnessed elite athletics emotion. “I saw athletes sacrifice everything but not get medal, and others who won. I knew then that you can curate your life whichever way you want with this talent, and I needed to get serious,” she says.

The Fraser-Pryce ‘start’ plunged many an opponent – given how she bulleted off the blocks, and she says that years of preparation went into getting that micro-second reaction to the gun, perfected. “There are cues you pay attention to leading up to the start of a race, like position in the blocks, leaning forward, but we work on the principle of an aeroplane and how it gathers pace in take-off,” she explains.

Besides her flaming trail of hair in riotous colours, Fraser-Pryce was best known for her zoning in pre-race warm-ups where she visualised an aeroplane and mimicked its runway. “The idea was to start low, build power and push forward, not up. If you explode up, and pop up high, then the stride lengths start dropping. I also tried not to run the whole race in my mind. The key was to start and move FORWARD, in capitals,” she laughs.

For someone built over just 5 feet, knowing she would need to take longer and more strides (usually 54 and below over the 100), than her opponents, she viewed her smaller as an advantage – counterintuitively. “Sometimes, tall sprinters have awkward starts so I didn’t mind my height. You can’t get rid of the fact, need to work with what you are given. It helped me stay compact and push forward,” she says reiterating that thinking of winning already at Stride 1 is a bad idea.

But the explosive starts also came from working on her core through plyometrics (jumps training). “My core was weak and I worked a lot on strength and stability to stay centred. It’s like you are holding a storm within you. If the core isn’t strong, you can go sideways,” she explains.

Given the GOAT runner’s longevity and medals matching Usain Bolt, Fraser-Pryce often defined the Jamaican identity. “Sometimes I take my greatness for granted, but you have to carry it with humility. I’m happy I added to conversations about achieving success leaving behind poverty, and how I ran in my 20s, 30s, after having a child, and telling people there’s no limits to what you overcome if you work hard, ” she says.

Would she ever run a marathon? Sprinters are notorious for their impatience in training over long distances. “You know, I think I can. Next time Bajaj invites me, I think I’ll train for a marathon!” she half-jokes.

“If I commit to it…. ,” the rest, in the case of Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, tends to become history. Pune has thrown her a bait. Nimbooda, lemonade and all that, she laughs.