An­dre Bap­tiste

For Trinidad and To­ba­go to be suc­cess­ful at the Lon­don Olympics, they need­ed to be as­sured that all was in place, with rooms, tick­ets, ac­cred­i­ta­tion, trans­porta­tion, sup­port staff and every­thing else. Af­ter the ex­pe­ri­ences in Bei­jing four years ear­li­er, the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee need­ed to step up its game to en­sure there were no prob­lems in Lon­don. Let me be the first to say that the TTOC's choice of An­nette Knott as the chef de mis­sion must be ap­plaud­ed. Her con­cern re­mains the ath­letes. "I am proud of all of them. They have done so well in their best per­for­mances and reach­ing fi­nals. And while I know peo­ple back home al­ways talk about medals and we all want that, these are just steps they are tak­ing to achieve that in the fu­ture." Knott not­ed there were 204 na­tions in Lon­don. "Some na­tions will go home with­out one of their ath­lete go­ing past the first round so we should be proud of our achieve­ments. Most per­sons do not know the ef­fort that many of these ath­letes have made on their own steam. Look at Njisane Phillips - mil­lions of pounds were spent on Chris Hoy but yet still Njisane was right there push­ing the British rid­ers," added Knott.

Sev­er­al of the ath­letes re­fer to her as "Mums" and "Aun­ty"-a sign of re­spect. They re­alise that she will do the best for them. All of the ath­letes I spoke to, ad­mit­ted the or­gan­i­sa­tion and ad­min­is­tra­tion were ex­cel­lent. Knott ex­plained that the pre-games camp in Wales was a ma­jor suc­cess. "It al­lowed us to get to know each oth­er and gave the ath­letes a chance to work with the sup­port staff, who have done won­der­ful work. It is a great just to be here with them. This is about com­mit­ment for T&T. I am very pleased with the help of both the pres­i­dent and gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the TTOC, who have great­ly as­sist­ed me" The el­e­gant chef de mis­sion sent out a mes­sage to T&T. "Let us please work to­geth­er with our ath­letes. In talk­ing with them, I know they have done a lot of what was achieved with­out our help. We all know we can do more for them,"stat­ed Knott. There are no words to de­scribe what Knott has done as the team leader of this group and her pos­i­tive out­look and fore­sight be­hind the scenes have kept the spir­it, en­thu­si­asm and fight­ing na­ture of this team go­ing for­ward. Sev­er­al of the ath­letes have left the Olympic Vil­lage. Among them are the box­ing team, some of the swim­mers and Roger Daniel. Most of the team will leave to­mor­row for T&T. How­ev­er, Knott will re­main in Lon­don un­til Mon­day to en­sure every­one is prop­er­ly tak­en care of be­fore she leaves.