Sprinter from tiny island of Curacao hopes for Olympic gold

Curaçao is a small island country located in the southern part of the Caribbean, off the north coast of Venezuela. With only one running track in the entire country, it's not the type of place where you would expect to find an Olympic contender for the title of "the world's fastest man."

Yet Curaçao is home to one of the top sprinters in the world, who will be going up against American Tyson Gay and Jamaican Usain Bolt in Beijing next month at the Olympics. His name is Churandy Martina (also spelled "Churandy Martina" in some news reports) and he's one of the fastest men in the world.

Martina won the gold medal in the 100 meters during the Pan American Games in Rio de Janeiro last year and he finished 5th in the 100 meters and 200 meters world championships in Osaka, Japan last year. Now he's aiming even higher.

"I want to win a medal at this year's Olympic Games in Beijing," Martina writes on his web site. He doesn't say he wants to win a gold medal, but he does hope to move higher on the list of the world's fastest athletes. "My goal is to break a world record. I know I can reach all of this, because nowadays I stand right next to those athletes that I used to look up to. They are not the untouchable heroes anymore. They are athletes just like me who are competing with each other to find out which one of us is the fastest," says Martina.

Martina has been training in Texas recently, according to Reuters.

As one of five island areas of the Netherlands Antilles, Curaçao is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The country is also the largest and most populous of the three "ABC islands" (Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao). The country is 171 square miles in land area and has an estimated population of 133,000.