I ex­tend ku­dos to Cather­ine Miller Miss T&T for do­ing her best at the pres­ti­gious Miss Uni­verse pageant, plac­ing sec­ond in the na­tion­al cos­tume seg­ment.Lo­cal fran­chise hold­er, Tribe must al­so be cred­it­ed for en­sur­ing that ex­pe­ri­enced pro­fes­sion­als in the var­i­ous as­pects of beau­ty were at Cather­ine's dis­pos­al pri­or to her leav­ing for the com­pe­ti­tion in Moscow.

Still, Tribe fell short in its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of en­sur­ing the best qual­i­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tion since the prepa­ra­tion time af­ford­ed to Ms Miller was woe­ful­ly too short. She was crowned Miss T&T on Sep­tem­ber 21, qual­i­fy­ing to com­pete in a pageant that start­ed one month lat­er. This was an up­hill fight for Cather­ine from in­cep­tion as it was for Avionne Mark last year, al­though she had sev­er­al weeks more.

Miss T&T had rough­ly three months of prepa­ra­tion when the re­al­i­ty show for the lo­cal ti­tle is in­clud­ed with the train­ing sub­se­quent to be­ing crowned Miss T&T. That late or­gan­is­ing/prepar­ing for the lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al pageants ap­pear to be a trend that works against our del­e­gates.

Imag­ine the rush to pre­pare for a ma­jor event like the Miss Uni­verse pageant and on­ly hav­ing four weeks to work with–to­tal­ly un­ac­cept­able. Many peo­ple got the im­pres­sion that T&T would not have sent a rep­re­sen­ta­tive this year due to the seem­ing last-minute scram­ble to put a show to­geth­er and send a girl to Moscow.

When we com­pare how Venezuela or­gan­is­es its lo­cal pageants and pre­pares its del­e­gates it's no won­der they win as of­ten as they do, in­clud­ing this year. Venezuela has al­ready se­lect­ed their rep­re­sen­ta­tive for next year's Miss Uni­verse com­pe­ti­tion. So that girl, as was the case with the cur­rent Miss Uni­verse, will have an en­tire year to pre­pare and re­fine all as­pects of beau­ty and skills there­of. Put an­oth­er way, "If you fail to ad­e­quate­ly pre­pare, then you should pre­pare to fail."

If we are se­ri­ous about T&T del­e­gates do­ing bet­ter at in­ter­na­tion­al pageants then at least eight months of re­lat­ed train­ing, prepa­ra­tion and fine-tun­ing must be af­ford­ed to the lucky Miss T&T be­fore she de­parts for the com­pe­ti­tion.We were for­tu­nate in the past to have had ex­cep­tion­al tal­ent that re­quired min­i­mum train­ing and did won­ders, ie Janelle, Giselle and Wendy. But we must re­alise that we have many rough di­a­monds in this land that may need sig­nif­i­cant pol­ish­ing be­fore shin­ing their bright­est.

So Tribe, please change your strat­e­gy and take a page from the Venezue­lan book of beau­ty. More prepa­ra­tion equals bet­ter re­sults and ul­ti­mate glo­ry to T&T by ex­ten­sion.

Dex­ter Rigs­by

Mt Lam­bert