Armory Alum and Bahamas Legend Mike Sands Leads World Relay Championships

By Elliott Denman

NASSAU, BAHAMAS – Oh, mon, the glory days have been many for Mike Sands in the sport of track and field. They really began as a mid-teen when he moved from the Bahamas with his mom to Brooklyn and enrolled at Sheepshead Bay High School, found the sport that would be his destiny, and came under the coaching wing of  an inspired mentor named Stu Levine.

He tore up the PSAL, Armory indoor and Eastern Interscholastic circuits as a dominating sprinter, beating most everybody in sight – well, not all of them and all the time, his duels with such great contemporaries as Steve and Harold Williams of Evander Childs are still remembered as classics - at distances from the 60 yards to the quarter-mile. The many splinters he picked up at the then-flat floored Armory served as poignant reminders of his many competitive visits to Washington Heights.  

No wonder many of the nation’s collegiate coaching elite came courting in Brooklyn. But it’s Penn State that won out and the second stage of Mike Sands’ track career, now under the guidance of famed Nittany Lions’ head coach Harry Groves, took full flight. And again the medals, golds often, kept amassing from the IC4A and NCAA Championships. And a whole lot more.

He would be named to the Bahamas Olympic teams of 1972 (Munich) and 1976 (Montreal), reaching the quarter-finals of the 100 and 400, but reaching a far greater honor before each of those Games even got rolling – as the flag-bearerof his island nation each time (at age 19 and then 23).

Back in 1975, he clocked career bests and Bahamian records of 10.1 for the 100 meters and 45.20 for the 440 yards, marks destined to stay in the books as national records for over two decades.

He’d won the NCAA 440 indoor title for Penn State in 1975 and went on to run third (in the 200) and fourth (400) at the Pan American Games, but to many in these parts his biggest achievement of all was his gold medal sprint performance in the’75 Central American and Caribbean Championships.

That one represented major history – no Bahamian athlete had ever reached the gold standard in the CAC Championships. It served as a major spark to the Bahamas’ continued progress on the road to international renown in the No. 1 Olympic sport.

It was Thomas A. “Tommy” Robinson – a star sprinter who flew off from Nassau to star for the University of Michigan Wolverines and represented Bahamas in four Olympic Games, starting in 1956 - who really got this Bahamian success story rolling.  Robinson passed away, age 76, in 2012, but he’s enshrined in Michigan’s Hall of Honor and the handsome Thomas A. Robinson Stadium here in Nassau – ready to host many of the planet’s fastest and finest at the inaugural edition of the IAAF World Relay Championships.

It was Mike Sands who continued the process Robinson began.

“I actually left the Bahamas in the fall of 1968," Sands, now 60, his hair speckled with gray, tells you after a pre-World Relays press conference. “My mother was in New York, doing a nursing course, and I just wanted to come and be with her.”

Soon he decided to stay a while, attend school in the big city, and first stop was Brooklyn’s Wingate High School. His stay at Wingate would last exactly one day.

“Remember that this was 1968 and the year of the big teachers’ strike. I had done just a little running in Nassau but I really wasn’t Involved in track and field yet. I’d played soccer mostly.”

With the teachers out, he went home – just in time to watch many of the the historic events of the 1968 Mexico City Olympics on television.  It was pure inspiration to him. Soccer was no longer his favorite sport. By the time of the next Olympic Games, he was an Olympian himself.

With school back, it took just one day for him to decide he didn’t like the climate or the environment at Brooklyn’s Wingate. So an out-of-district transfer to Sheepshead Bay – no matter that it was a long bus and train ride away – wasarranged.

“I lived on St. John’s Place, between Utica and Schenectady, but Sheepshead Bay turned out great for me,” he said. “I really connected with Coach Levine. We still get together each year. He’s retired now and living in Freehold, N.J., and he still keeps in touch with most of us.

“He  did a great job, he was like my father away.

“I was fortunate in having a number of offers from major universities, but Coach Harry Groves was very convincing and Penn State was a great decision.  We still keep in touch, too, and always meet up at the Penn Relays.” 

Summers and post-season, he was a proud representative of the New York Pioneer Club and has cherished memories of running under the tutelage of the NYPC’s National Track and Field Hall of Fame coach Joe Yancey and assistant (and later successor) Ed Levy.

“They were wonderful people, Mr. Yancey and Mr. Levy, the best. I was fortunate there, too,” says Sands.

Eventually, he returned to Nassau and with his competition days over was convinced he needed to stay in the sport by Mr. Alpheus Finlayson, for years one of the most prominent figures in Bahamian athletics, as official, journalist, broadcaster, organizer, and most importantly, serving as a member of the sport’s global governing body, the IAAF Council.

“Alpheus talked me into having a role in the sport and I’m very grateful for that, too,” he says.  

After holding several major positions along the way, Sands has served several terms as president of the Bahamas AAA. And in that role he’s one of the proudest men you’d ever want to see.

“It is a special honor to me, as president of the host association, to warmly welcome you to this, the inauguraledition of the IAAF World Relays,” he wrote in the official program. More than 40 nations will be represented by over 700 runners in the 10 events (4x100, 200, 400, 800 and 1500 meters for men and women).

Tommy Robinson and Mike Sands got it going and the Bahamas men’s gold medal performance in the 4X400 relay at the 2012 London Olympic Games was the biggest proof yet that this land of just some 350,000 citizens can more than hold its own with “the big guys” of track and field.

That London 4x400 triumph was clearly the impetus for the IAAF’s awarding these first World Relay Championships to Bahamas and the stewardship of Mike Sands and his team of dedicated track and field enthusiasts. Even before the first starting gun was fired, the World Relays was rated the biggest sporting event in Bahamas history.

A distant number two – probably the Muhammad Ali-Trevor Berbick heavyweight fight in December 1981, in a ring hastily set up in an old baseball park. Its stunning result – a unanimous 10-round Berbick decision over the fading Ali.

But there will be no such violence at Thomas A. Robinson Stadium this weekend. Starting guns, sure. Then, on with the show and a date with sports history.