Sport Min­is­ter Anil Roberts has giv­en his as­sur­ance that he will fight for re­sources to im­prove sports in the coun­try. "I will do it," he said. Roberts said over the next 30 months Gov­ern­ment will spend $1.8 bil­lion on sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties. He was speak­ing yes­ter­day at a sim­ple re­cep­tion to wel­come home dou­ble Olympic bronze medal­list Lalonde Gor­don at the VIP Lounge, Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port. Gor­don won the bronze medal in the 400 me­tres sprint and was part of the 4x400 me­tres re­lay team that al­so copped bronze at the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Lon­don Olympic Games.

The young ath­lete was wel­comed home by his moth­er Cyn­thia Cu­pid, Roberts, Bri­an Lewis of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee and oth­er of­fi­cials. Gor­don re­ceived two large framed pic­tures of him­self in the two races. Roberts said Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar will an­nounce his re­wards at a lat­er date. While Roberts show­ered prais­es on the To­bag­on­ian for his ef­fort, he said there was much work to be done in the field of sport.

"We have a lot of work to do and as Min­is­ter of Sport I will not shirk my re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. We have a lot of in­fra­struc­ture to put in place, a lot of in­vest­ment in­to the ath­letes, in­to the coach­es, in­to the de­vel­op­ment, in­to the sci­ence, in­to the mas­sage ther­a­py and in­to the sports sci­ence cen­tre. "I will do that. I have no fear. We will fight for the re­sources with­in the Cab­i­net and the bud­get and that will be done so I ac­cept my re­spon­si­bil­i­ty."

Roberts said $800 mil­lion will be spent on the Na­tion­al Aquat­ic Cen­tre, a velo­drome and a Na­tion­al Ten­nis Cen­tre, while more than $1 bil­lion will be spent on 19 re­gion­al sport­ing cen­tres, in­clud­ing air-con­di­tioned in­door net­ball courts, squash courts, track and field, com­put­er rooms, bas­ket­ball courts and sports med­i­cine fa­cil­i­ties. "So when you di­vide up all of that in­vest­ment it is a lot of mon­ey.

"How­ev­er, our coach­es must un­der­stand that if they do not ed­u­cate them­selves...we could be as good as Lalonde Gor­don, born with ge­net­ic abil­i­ty to run a 43.93 (race) but if the coach­es do not know how to plan, pe­ri­odise, how to train, how to push, how to re­cov­er and how to get them men­tal­ly ready, then we are go­ing to fail," Roberts said.