An­dre Bap­tiste

Now that the eu­pho­ria has re­ced­ed we can be­gin to clin­i­cal­ly as­sess the per­for­mance of our ath­letes at the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Lon­don Olympics. With an over­all medal tal­ly of four, a gold and three bronze, the coun­try as a whole needs to de­ter­mine whether our ath­letes let us down or whether we have let them down. First of all, let us get one myth out of the way, Ja­maicans-as a group-have no nat­ur­al God-giv­en abil­i­ty that sets them apart from the rest of the Caribbean. So noth­ing in the Olympics hap­pens through di­vin­i­ty, the re­sult earned by every com­peti­tor is a re­sult of their hard work and the sup­port that they have se­cured through­out their ca­reer. I have high­light­ed four words that I will come back to, time and time again. The first word I want to fo­cus on is "and". Each suc­cess­ful ath­lete needs that "and" to achieve their suc­cess. Ei­ther of those two fac­tors will not cut it on its own. The ath­lete must be pre­pared to do the hard work nec­es­sary "and" they must get the sup­port re­quired to fa­cil­i­tate that suc­cess. Sup­port re­quired. This sup­port is not just words of com­men­da­tion, a na­tion­al hol­i­day to cel­e­brate suc­cess, chest pound­ing by those in au­thor­i­ties, a mo­ti­va­tion­al song or even me­dia cov­er­age. We are talk­ing about some­thing much more sub­stan­tial and some­thing which be­gins long be­fore the suc­cess has been achieved.

The sup­port re­quired be­gins with putting the prop­er in­fra­struc­ture in place to iden­ti­fy the tal­ent­ed youths among us. Like the Ja­maicans, this must be­gin at the Pri­ma­ry School lev­el. Once the fire has been ig­nit­ed and the tal­ent iden­ti­fied, there must be greater sup­port pro­vid­ed to the lo­cal clubs in T&T. Most of these clubs such as Mem­phis, Phoenix, etc are bare­ly etch­ing out a liv­ing and re­ly­ing a lot on pri­vate spon­sor­ship to just be able to have the ba­sic ameni­ties avail­able to our bud­ding ath­letes. There should be gov­ern­ment owned and fund­ed fa­cil­i­ties to which these clubs are pro­vid­ed free ac­cess. The goal is to be sure that we iden­ti­fy as ear­ly as pos­si­ble our ath­letes with po­ten­tial to make it on the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el. Once this is ac­com­plished, we can­not de­pend on for­eign scouts to of­fer spon­sor­ships for these ath­letes to study and run abroad. As a coun­try, we have to be pre­pared to fund the de­vel­op­ment of these ath­letes. Some times this de­vel­op­ment may not in­clude fur­ther­ing any stud­ies. We have all heard the sto­ry of Njisane Phillip who fo­cused on his cy­cling to the ex­clu­sion of his stud­ies once he found he had the pas­sion for it. Then we hear the sto­ries about, among oth­ers, the Aus­tralian, Chi­nese, Russ­ian ath­letes whose full time ca­reer is im­prov­ing their ath­let­ic abil­i­ty. These ath­letes progress are fund­ed en­tire­ly by their na­tion­al gov­ern­ments. Why do we think that hap­pens? Is it for the ego of the gov­ern­ment? Is it be­cause of the per­son­al agen­da of some­one in­flu­en­tial in gov­ern­ment? Is it be­cause some­one knows some­one? I don't think so.

Most of these gov­ern­ments (in­clud­ing Ja­maica) see ath­let­ic suc­cess as the best ad­ver­tise­ment of the coun­try. More peo­ple will know Ja­maica be­cause of the suc­cess of Us­ain Bolt than be­cause of any in­vest­ment in tourism pro­mo­tion. It was much the same when Bri­an Lara was so fab­u­lous­ly suc­cess­ful dur­ing his crick­et ca­reer. Peo­ple could re­al­ly on­ly re­late to T&T when you men­tioned that it was the coun­try of birth of Bri­an Lara. Suc­cess­ful ath­letes are the best pro­mo­tion­al ma­te­r­i­al for any coun­try. T&T tends to jump on the band­wag­on of an ath­lete's suc­cess af­ter it has been achieved. Are we sur­prised then that we have so few band­wag­ons to jump on? Suc­cess breeds suc­cess. I doubt we have many ju­nior ath­letes be­ing in­spired to work hard­er by our semi­fi­nal­ists when com­pared to the ju­nior ath­letes in Ja­maica be­ing in­spired by Bolt, Yohan Blake, Shelly-Ann Fras­er-Pryce, et al. And to think we had Hase­ly Craw­ford! The sup­port of the gov­ern­ment does not in any way ob­vi­ate the need for cor­po­rate spon­sors to be­come more in­volved in the de­vel­op­ment of our ath­letes. Of­ten enough, once an ath­lete has achieved suc­cess at the world stage, cor­po­rate spon­sors tend to fall over them­selves to get a piece of that ath­lete. I am sure the ath­lete would not turn down what­ev­er as­sis­tance is pro­vid­ed, but truth be told, they need that as­sis­tance much more when their ca­reer is in its in­fan­cy.

Cor­po­rate spon­sors need to come out of their com­fort zone and get be­hind T&T ath­letes from a much ear­li­er stage. Some will suc­ceed, and some won't but they need to get be­hind the young men and women as they seek to ac­com­plish their am­bi­tions. Their jour­ney will do those spon­sors proud and not every in­vest­ment need be about mileage for the com­pa­ny, some­times the good of the coun­try mat­ters. The sec­ond half of the equa­tion is the hard work of the ath­lete. Bolt in­di­cat­ed that af­ter his de­feat at the legs of Blake in the Ja­maican Na­tion­als, he got the wake-up call that he ob­vi­ous­ly need­ed to step up his game. And he ob­vi­ous­ly did that. Hope­ful­ly, our ath­letes have re­ceived a sim­i­lar wake­up call fol­low­ing this Olympics. T&T's ath­letes are not in­fe­ri­or to ath­letes from any oth­er part of the world. There is noth­ing that any of them are do­ing that we can­not al­so achieve. Let us re­solve to give them our full sup­port and they in turn pledge to work as hard as they phys­i­cal­ly can to take them­selves to the next lev­el. If that so­cial com­pact is made, Brazil 2016 could be our year for more Olympic gold.