Sean Nero

Any plans for the host­ing of a na­tion­al games' must in­clude all sports and its fo­cus on de­vel­op­ment must be long term, says Bri­an Lewis, pres­i­dent of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC).

He was re­spond­ing to Mon­day's bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai in which he stat­ed Gov­ern­ment's com­mit­ment to sport­ing elite ath­letes, de­vel­op­ing foot­ball at the grass root lev­el, as well as the pro­posed in­tro­duc­tion of the T&T Na­tion­al Games.

Foot­ball, bas­ket­ball, crick­et, net­ball and ath­let­ics were the dis­ci­plines iden­ti­fied by the state for this pi­lot project. Howai said, "We will es­tab­lish the Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Games with the in­au­gur­al games tak­ing place ear­ly in 2015. We are de­vel­op­ing a crit­i­cal mass of ath­letes and dis­ci­plines are be­ing tar­get­ed: foot­ball, bas­ket­ball, crick­et, net­ball and ath­let­ics. With­in this gen­er­al frame­work we shall con­tin­ue to fund elite ath­letes so that they can at­tain ex­cel­lence at the high­est lev­els of com­pe­ti­tion."

Lewis de­scribed the an­nounce­ment as "in­ter­est­ing" and said he was ea­ger to learn the de­tails of the plan.

"They have tar­get­ed five sports. In the con­text of ath­letes, with next year be­ing the World Cham­pi­onship and the PanAm Games in Toron­to, Ju­ly, it will be in­ter­est­ing to see what would be the thoughts in terms of sched­ul­ing. I al­so would have liked that in that Games to come up, that it in­cludes more sports. I think the state-of-the-art fa­cil­i­ties near com­ple­tion, again based on what was stat­ed in the bud­get: Na­tion­al Aquat­ic Cen­tre, the Na­tion­al Ten­nis Cen­tre and at the Na­tion­al Cy­cle Cen­tre, in ad­di­tion to the five mul­ti-pur­pose sta­dia, it cre­ates a plat­form and an op­por­tu­ni­ty for a strate­gic ap­proach to the mar­ket­ing our sport events host­ing/sport tourism ca­pac­i­ty," he said.

In a G-Sport in­ter­view on Mon­day, Sports Min­is­ter Dr Grif­fith dis­ci­plines not men­tioned among the five to pi­lot the Games should not be dis­cour­aged since Gov­ern­ment al­so had plans for the pro­duc­tion of a Sun­shine Sport Fes­ti­val next April at which oth­er sports would take the spot­light.

But Lewis made it clear he could on­ly deal with what was pre­sent­ed in the na­tion­al bud­get state­ment.

"The on­ly thing that was men­tioned in the bud­get was the (T&T) Na­tion­al Games and I am say­ing that there are some de­tails that we need to hear about. Is the T&T Na­tion­al Games fit­ting in­to the long-term sport de­vel­op­ment con­tin­u­um? Is it in con­junc­tion with the na­tion­al sport or­gan­i­sa­tion and does it tie in­to their long-term ath­lete sport de­vel­op­ment per­spec­tive? How does it in­te­grate with the Na­tion­al Sport Pol­i­cy; in­te­grate in terms of the pol­i­cy frame­work and ob­jec­tive pro­ject­ing T&T in­ter­na­tion­al as a sport hub," he asked.