The Jamaica Information Service of 7 October 2025 reported that Ricardo “Bibi” Gardner was to be conferred with the Order of Distinction in the Rank of Officer on National Heroes’ Day, 20 October 2025, “for contribution to Sports, in particular football.” On 21 October JIS recorded the investiture at King’s House.

He told Britney Stevens of JIS News that he went to Wolmer’s Boys’ School on a track-and-field scholarship. “I went there for track and field, so no one knew I could play football… One day, they just saw me on the football field and the rest was history.” The Observer of 7 October reprinted the same interview.

The Observer of 3 December 2013, by Sean Williams, is the independent Manning Cup paper. After Jamaica College beat Wolmer’s in extra time, Gardner, “a former star at the Heroes Circle school,” said the defeat was “very hard to take.” Williams recorded that he had been “an integral part” of the 1994 Manning Cup side “as a precocious 14-year-old.”

JIS traces the club path from Harbour View through the Reggae Boyz in 1997 and the France 1998 World Cup squad. After France he went to Bolton Wanderers. JIS and a 2014 Gleaner snippet both print 14 years at the club. Audley Boyd, in the Gleaner of 1 December 2025, wrote: “from schoolboy selection at Wolmer’s Boys to captaining Bolton Wanderers in the English Premier League.”

Sources

Sources: JIS, Jamaica honours Ricardo “Bibi” Gardner with OD, 7 October 2025; Jamaica Observer, Wolmer’s Manning Cup defeat hurts Bibi deeply, 3 December 2013; Jamaica Gleaner, Time to end English experiment, 1 December 2025.