Bri­an Lewis

T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) pres­i­dent, Michael 'Lar­ry' Ro­many, re­cent­ly at­tend­ed a very in­ter­est­ing con­fer­ence host­ed by the Unit­ed States Olympic Com­mit­tee (USOC) in Col­orado Springs.

In the last 12 years, the TTOC has sought to op­ti­mise and lever­age sim­i­lar con­fer­ence in­vi­ta­tions and net­work­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties. In that pe­ri­od, no TTOC af­fil­i­ate can cred­i­bly say that the Olympic com­mit­tee has not of­fered ca­pac­i­ty build­ing train­ing and cours­es.

Some af­fil­i­ates made max­i­mum use of these op­por­tu­ni­ties. Oth­ers did not.

Over the next four years, the TTOC will con­tin­ue its fo­cus on in­for­ma­tion and knowl­edge trans­fer shar­ing and ca­pac­i­ty build­ing.

In Col­orado Springs, there were 40 high per­for­mance cen­tres from around the globe at the con­fer­ence of the In­ter­na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of High Per­for­mance Sport Cen­tres. Every con­ti­nent was rep­re­sent­ed from Aus­tralia to Africa, Fin­land to France, Ger­many to Cana­da, and USA to Brazil.

Most of them were con­nect­ed to their re­spec­tive NOCs as Olympic train­ing cen­tres and were all very keen to ex­change ideas and method­olo­gies on Sports Med­i­cine and Sports Sci­ence. In ad­di­tion they were all set up to ac­cept ath­letes and teams from oth­er coun­tries to live and train at their re­spec­tive cen­tres.

There was a time not so long ago, when sports med­i­cine and sport sci­ence tech­nol­o­gy were close­ly guard­ed by the de­vel­oped coun­tries. All of that seems to be chang­ing now es­pe­cial­ly in the minds of all sports sci­en­tists, who be­lieve eq­ui­ty and fair­play, can on­ly be achieved if every­one has ac­cess to the same in­for­ma­tion.

The USOC were tremen­dous hosts and en­sured that the vis­i­tors had ac­cess to all ar­eas at their Olympic train­ing cen­tre (OTC) in Col­orado Springs. There were a num­ber of pre­sen­ta­tions from Ger­many, Aus­tralia, Fin­land, France, South Africa, Cana­da, USA, Japan, Spain, WA­DA and ES­PN. Top­ics in­clud­ed:

n Prof­it vs Per­for­mance. How will high lev­el per­for­mance cen­tres (HPCs) cope in the new eco­nom­ic cli­mate.

n Im­por­tance of HPCs in de­liv­er­ing de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes to grass roots and medals to their stake­hold­ers.

n The im­por­tance of An­ti-Dop­ing Ed­u­ca­tion to grass roots.

n Changes tak­ing place in Sport Sci­ence.

n The im­por­tance of HPCs–An Ath­lete's per­spec­tive.

The TTOC was able to hold dis­cus­sions with sev­er­al HPCs with a view to cre­at­ing part­ner­ship agree­ments for T&T ath­letes and na­tion­al sport or­gan­i­sa­tions (NSOs) to spend ex­tend­ed pe­ri­ods of time at HPCs across the globe.

Dis­cus­sions were held with: Kip Keno's HPC in Kenya; The Ger­man OTC in Berlin; USOC OTCs in Col­orado Springs and Chu­la Vista; The HPC in Sin­ga­pore; The HPC in Hong Kong; The HPC in Pre­to­ria ,South Africa and The Vol­ley­ball HPC in Brazil.

All of the above HPCs ser­vice sports that the TTOC views as im­por­tant to the de­vel­op­ment of sport in T&T.

The TTOC ex­tend­ed an in­vi­ta­tion to the Min­istry of Sport and the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T (Sportt) to be part of the TTOC del­e­ga­tion. Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T Ex­ec­u­tive Chair­man Ken­neth Charles at­tend­ed and had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to view all fa­cil­i­ties and sys­tems at the OTC in Col­orado.

Sportt was en­cour­aged by the TTOC to hold dis­cus­sions with the ma­jor HPCs present with a view of cre­at­ing part­ner­ships that could prove vi­tal in the de­vel­op­ment of a sys­tem­at­ic, for­ward think­ing and sus­tain­able T&T sport in­fra­struc­ture.

The TTOC has al­ways viewed the de­vel­op­ment of the lo­cal sport in­fra­struc­ture as an evo­lu­tion­ary process re­quir­ing gen­uine and sin­cere part­ner­ing. No one lo­cal group or en­ti­ty will have all the an­swers and ideas. The im­por­tance of re­spect and un­der­stand­ing re­mains crit­i­cal.

For any num­ber of valid rea­sons the Min­istry of Sport, Sportt and the TTOC are im­por­tant stake­hold­ers when it comes to mul­ti-sport games un­der the aus­pices of the IOC.

It is there­fore im­per­a­tive that these three or­gan­i­sa­tions main­tain a cor­dial and co­op­er­a­tive re­la­tion­ship.

The re­cent con­fer­ence in Col­orado Springs pro­vid­ed a strate­gic op­por­tu­ni­ty for vi­sion and mis­sion align­ment.

Let me ac­knowl­edge and thank the TTOC pres­i­dent for the in­for­ma­tion and notes from the con­fer­ence.

Ed­i­tor's note: Bri­an Lewis is the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the T&TOC and his views are not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of the or­gan­i­sa­tion.