Dr Cliff Bertrand

Pe­ter's Prin­ci­ple al­ludes to the fact that peo­ple are of­ten el­e­vat­ed to their lev­el of in­com­pe­tence. This comes to mind when one ex­am­ines the man­ner in which the NAAA con­ducts some of its busi­ness. The prob­lem is not that they make mis­takes but rather how they take care of the mis­takes. Mis­takes, when han­dled prop­er­ly, are in­te­gral in many ar­eas of progress and de­vel­op­ment. Be­fore em­bark­ing on any project there should be a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty ma­trix de­lin­eat­ing every as­pect of the project and those re­spon­si­ble for each as­pect of the plan-who is do­ing what, who is re­port­ing to whom, what is need­ed for the ex­e­cu­tion of each step.The NAAA should be au courant with all as­pects of ath­let­ics. They must be aware of the rules and reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing the sport. With­in the last few weeks, we have seen glar­ing mis­takes which could have been avoid­ed if there was prop­er plan­ning and knowl­edge of the process­es in­volved. It is em­bar­rass­ing to learn about the sce­nario of a for­eign-based ath­lete be­ing in­formed of se­lec­tion, then be­ing told that this is not so; or about a top ath­lete be­ing left out be­cause some­one for­got. If this is the best that NAAA could do, they need to make way for those more ca­pa­ble?

Is­sues for dis­cus­sion

Role of the PRO-he did not know the com­po­si­tion of the Pan Amer­i­can Ju­nior team and yet he re­spond­ed to a news pa­per ed­i­to­r­i­al say­ing the writer must get facts straight: http://www.guardian.co.tt/sport/2011/08/08/naaa-must-live-promis­es Dr Bertrand, "Cer­tain­ly you are mis­in­formed. I am not sure who is ad­vis­ing you or where you are gath­er­ing your in­for­ma­tion. At the Pan Am Ju­nior Cham­pi­onships there were no To­ba­go ath­lete that rep­re­sent­ed us. Please dou­ble check this state­ment. Do not hurt the To­bag­o­ni­ans! It is a mat­ter of pride! I would ap­pre­ci­ate if you have con­tacts or in­for­ma­tion that can as­sist for fu­ture, this would help a great deal. It would avoid any ath­lete and par­ent the stress." The NAAA must tell this to Je­hue Gor­don, Zwede He­witt and Ayan­na Alexan­der. This trio was em­bar­rassed by the NAAA and so was T&T.

As per the re­quest of the PRO. I humbly sub­mit: Re­ports quote the NAAA as say­ing the ath­lete opt­ed to sleep in air­port to catch the ear­ly flight to To­ba­go.

Who is run­ning things? The 17-year-old ath­lete or the NAAA? Sec­re­tary Al­lan Ba­boolal said on i95.FM on Thurs­day that he was hap­py that An­dre Bap­tiste and i95.5 un­der­stood the NAAA when they said the Je­hue Gor­don and Ayan­na Alexan­der is­sues were er­rors for which the NAAA took full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. Is he ex­pect­ing to get off with a slap on the back, or a pres­i­den­tial par­don? They com­mit­ted the same mis­take again in Ko­rea with Zwede He­witt in the 400me­tres. What be­came of the is­sue be­tween He­witt's fa­ther and the NAAA pres­i­dent at the Na­tion­al Cham­pi­onships, re the seed­ing process of his son, Ba­boolal and Voisin are full time sec­re­tary and as­sis­tant sec­re­tary re­spec­tive­ly. Who are pay­ing them? Who are they ac­count­able to? The cit­i­zens are await­ing a re­port on the games, not a weath­er re­port as you gave this week. What hap­pened in that room, re: Gor­don and He­witt? Who is the of­fi­cial spokesman of the NAAA?

What is the NAAA do­ing to height­en aware­ness of the World Cham­pi­onships to give spon­sors their monies worth or to at­tract new spon­sors?

What does Je­hue Gor­don's coach, Dr Ian Hy­po­lite, have to say about his ath­lete al­most be­ing left out of the 400 me­tres hur­dle. His coach is the na­tion­al team's head coach and sec­ond vice pres­i­dent of the NAAA. He does wear many hats. How does the man­ag­er ex­plain this lat­est mishap. He­witt was as­sured he would run in the 400 me­tres. His hopes were high, he warmed up and got ready on­ly to be told he could not run by the IAAF. What did they tell you at the tech­ni­cal meet­ing Mr Voisin? You do not know the rules? No A qual­i­fiers, on­ly B. Just one B would ne al­lowed to com­pete in the event. Or is it you just do not know the rules? There were no ex­pla­na­tions for the omis­sions of An­nie Alexan­der who made B stan­dard in women's shot put and Janiel Bel­lie who made B stan­dard in women's 400m hur­dles. Why? In­spite of all this ne­glect and neg­a­tiv­i­ty, the two days at the Na­tion­al Cham­pi­onships were very ex­cit­ing.

The clock, it ap­peared to me, mal­func­tioned sev­er­al times. Dur­ing a cou­ple of the short and medi­um sprints there was no clock at the gun but when the win­ner passed the tape, the clock lit up show­ing a time which was al­ways in­cor­rect. When Thomp­son crossed the fin­ish line, the clock showed 09.46 sec­onds, then about 10 sec­onds lat­er 09.85 secs was post­ed. In the women's 100 me­tres, it was: On your marks, set, gun. No Clock and a blank fin­ish. Clock showed 10.81 then it went blank for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 15 sec­onds be­fore fi­nal­ly set­tling on 11 sec­onds. How do you ex­plain that? The an­nounc­er was as­ton­ished and so was TV 14, who were cov­er­ing the event.Check your Grand-Prix Elec­tron­ic Tim­ing Sys­tem Links and the in­tegri­ty of the ex­pert who ma­nip­u­lat­ed the tim­ing de­vice. (Fix it crazy fix it!) By the way, there is a video of the en­tire process of de­cep­tion. Of­fi­cials be­hind the start­ing line en­gage in seem­ing­ly "old talk." Ath­letes yawn­ing with bore­dom on the start­ing line be­fore the call at of­fi­cials' plea­sure. Over­all, the at­mos­phere was ex­cit­ing. Ex­cept for the keen and method­olog­i­cal ob­serv­er. Con­grat­u­la­tions to Kel­ly-Ann Bap­tiste. I be­lieve in you, girl.