Pao­lo Ker­na­han

Now I am not a fan of the Olympics, or sports for that mat­ter. My in­ter­est was aroused, though, when I be­gan read­ing of the num­ber of ath­letes from Trinidad and To­ba­go who are par­tic­i­pat­ing. Like any Tri­ni with a healthy stinkmout, I told friends our cam­paign would be short-lived and that the ath­letes would be spend­ing the ma­jor­i­ty of the games in the stands.

I was buoyed, though, by the ear­ly promise of George Bovell III. In a tele­vi­sion in­ter­view record­ed long be­fore the games, this lanky young man had no il­lu­sions about the com­pe­ti­tion he was go­ing to face. I haven't held a rosary in many years, but I mas­saged those beads like fried chan­na af­ter 15 beers as George read­ied him­self for that "defin­ing" mo­ment which we im­posed on him. The dis­ap­point­ing out­come of that 50-me­tre event is now his­to­ry.

Dis­tressed, as if I had lost the race my­self, I called a friend who was once a pro­fes­sion­al swim­mer. Jean Bou­caud, who is now more like­ly to be found in ca­su­al re­pose be­side the wa­ter than in it (sor­ry, Jean, I couldn't help it!) told me of his Olympic bid and hav­ing fall­en short by a mea­sure­ment of time that it would take a breath to es­cape your lips. In his ex­pert opin­ion, the 50-me­tre swim­ming race is won or lost on the block.

It is light­ning fast and there­fore im­per­a­tive that you get the best pos­si­ble start. This was per­haps where George fell short. I de­fer to the ex­perts on that, be­cause my area of ex­per­tise is in­ter­galac­tic diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions. One young la­dy gave her hon­est opin­ion on George Bovell in the news­pa­per and quick­ly be­came the sub­ject of a Face­book lynch­ing. Her re­marks earned her the most vir­u­lent ire I'd seen since........since.......well since Therese Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis' dy­nam­ic dis­ser­ta­tion of delir­i­um.

The hap­less young la­dy sug­gest­ed that she was very dis­ap­point­ed be­cause "peo­ple take time off work" to watch dat race and he come last...brap brap brap. I am cer­tain­ly not go­ing to add to the ven­om that fol­lowed. By the way, who you fool­ing-takin' time off work to watch a ten-sec­ond race! Even in the face of crush­ing dis­ap­point­ment, George Bovell III was a study in class and good sports­man­ship. "In life there are fail­ures and we must get up and move on."

George Bovell III be­queathed us two lega­cies. He has stood tall and proud to rep­re­sent his coun­try, hav­ing made tremen­dous sac­ri­fices, along with all of our oth­er ath­letes, to show the world who we are. The oth­er lega­cy, I am afraid, has me very up­set. George, when you came out in your blast­ed fan­cy tech­ni­col­or swim­ming glass­es, your snug wa­ter britch­es and open hood­ie re­veal­ing your eight-pack, you set a new and un­at­tain­able stan­dard for sex­i­ness.

I heard nor­mal­ly re­served women whis­per­ing com­ments that would make Os­car Wilde blush. That bloody pic­ture was every­where! Now all women think that this is how men are sup­posed to look. You know how much trou­ble you causin' in peo­ple do­mes­tic af­fairs? T&T's dis­ap­point­ing show­ing at the 2012 Olympics opened up a very in­ter­est­ing de­bate. I was sur­prised to see the pas­sion with which folks have been de­fend­ing the "Go T&T, you did your best!" ethos. Look­it, I am proud too! I near­ly choked on my deb­bles when I saw cy­clist Njisane Phillips de­feat a Ger­man con­tender last week.

Af­ter that it was one prop­er cu­ta-af­ter the next. Here's my think­ing: enough with the "Fourth fastest! Sixth fastest! Sev­enth fastest in the world!" This coun­try needs to de­vel­op a se­ri­ous, sci­ence-backed ath­let­ics pro­gramme to iden­ti­fy tal­ent at an ear­ly age. We can't be sat­is­fied with "just be­ing there" Sure, pride is ap­pro­pri­ate, but we should cer­tain­ly aim high­er.

Al­so, show­ing sup­port does not mean post­ing some­thing on Face­book or meet­ing up with friends at a bar with a flatscreen tv. You were go­ing to be at that bar any­way. It just so hap­pens that the Olympics are on! If ath­let­ics were a band launch­ing, things would be quite dif­fer­ent. Eef you feel ah lie, you on­ly need look back to the world-cup Ger­many bid.

Dur­ing most of the qual­i­fiers the sup­port for the So­ca (ug­gh) War­riors was luke­warm. When the team just bare­ly squeezed through like a catheter in their game against Bahrain, every­one be­came team T&T! Tri­nis, many of whom are still pay­ing for that trip, trav­elled all the way to Ger­many where­as be­fore, they couldn't be a--ed to find the Mar­vin LeeSta­di­um. Tri­nis who bare­ly have a grasp of their own lan­guage were in Deutsch­land havin' ah time!

It is clear that there is a wealth of po­ten­tial for this coun­try to pro­duce medal-win­ning ath­letes, but at the in­sti­tu­tion­al lev­el this must be tak­en more se­ri­ous­ly. And as far as fan sup­port goes, you could try get­ting to know the names of these ath­letes be­fore you get to the wa­ter­ing hole.