?Hugh Hen­der­son

When one looks at a map of the world, it is a tough job ac­tu­al­ly lo­cat­ing the dot that con­firms there is a place named T&T- size is very rel­e­vant in terms of sport. To work out T&T's pop­u­la­tion of 1.3 mil­lion as a per­cent­age of the world's pop­u­la­tion of bil­lions in­volves count­less ze­ros af­ter the dec­i­mal point – num­bers are very rel­e­vant on the sub­ject of sport. In my life­time (1939 – to time of writ­ing) this "dot" of 1.3 mil­lion peo­ple has pro­duced the fol­low­ing "ex­cep­tion­al" in­ter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized sports per­son­al­i­ties – Sir Learie Con­stan­tine; Son­ny Ra­mad­hin; Bri­an Lara (crick­et); Rod­ney Wilkes, Mc­Don­ald Bai­ley, Mike Agos­ti­ni, Hase­ly Craw­ford, Ato Boldon (Track and Field); Dwight Yorke, Rus­sell Lat­apy (foot­ball); George Bovell 111 (swim­ming); Stephen Ames (golf); Emile Ram­sam­my (jock­ey).

We can safe­ly add the na­tion­al foot­ball team qual­i­fy­ing for World Cup 2006 in Ger­many as the small­est na­tion ever to do so, and to a less­er ex­tent, our na­tion­al crick­et team reach­ing the fi­nal of the 2009 IPL tour­na­ment in In­dia - apolo­gies for any se­ri­ous omis­sions. The above list deals with sport on­ly and does not con­sid­er our in­ter­na­tion­al con­tri­bu­tions in mu­sic (steel­band), cul­ture (Car­ni­val), lit­er­a­ture (Vidia Naipaul) and a his­to­ry of liv­ing in a peace­ful democ­ra­cy made up of three ma­jor re­li­gions. I have men­tioned on­ly those who are "ex­cep­tion­al" but there are many in the sec­ond tier of "very good" in­clud­ing some present day stars. I don't know about you, but when I re­flect on the above and un­der­stand the less than ac­cept­able con­di­tions un­der which the in­di­vid­u­als made it to the top, I feel very proud to be a Tri­ni and I do not like the way we con­tin­u­al­ly beat up on our­selves with a gift for fo­cus­ing on the neg­a­tives when so many pos­i­tives are star­ing us in the face - for ex­am­ple, the re­cent "fail­ure" of the track and field team in South Ko­rea. Is "fail­ure" a re­al­is­tic as­sess­ment?

I lay the blame for this tra­di­tion­al neg­a­tive at­ti­tude square­ly on the heads of politi­cians over the decades. Suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments in pow­er have looked af­ter them­selves and wast­ed bil­lion$ in count­less, use­less ways. Par­ties in op­po­si­tion have done lit­tle but op­pose for the sake of op­pos­ing and seem not to mind sound­ing like id­iots. Lis­ten­ing to the Par­lia­ment Chan­nel re the de­bate on SoE made me cringe at the rub­bish spewed and time wast­ed. Racial talk comes up on­ly un­der the head­ing of "pol­i­tics"; on a day to day ba­sis we all live har­mo­nious­ly based on any world cri­te­ria. Re­cent events cause me to agree with the cur­few and SoE, and I thank and con­grat­u­late the mem­bers of the pub­lic who have pro­vid­ed in­for­ma­tion to the po­lice which has led to some amaz­ing and scary dis­cov­er­ies.

This new found will­ing­ness to help the au­thor­i­ties is a huge step in the ma­tu­ri­ty of our na­tion where lack of courage in many ar­eas is a known hall­mark. Please keep up the good work and let us all live in peace again.

Back to South Ko­rea and in my opin­ion it was not a case of fail­ure, not meet­ing ex­pec­ta­tions, win­ning on­ly one medal, and a cause for na­tion­al dis­ap­point­ment. Of course I would have liked more suc­cess, but I keep re­mind­ing my­self that minute lit­tle T&T has to com­pete against the world and win­ning even one medal is cause for joy. How many large na­tions failed to win a medal? We learned from the past and sent a com­pact team of qual­i­ty ath­letes along with an ac­cept­able num­ber of of­fi­cials. Sev­er­al of our ath­letes reached se­mi-fi­nal or fi­nal stage. Je­hue Gor­don missed his 400m fi­nal by 1/100th of a sec­ond and the kid is 19 years old! The men's re­lay team was hin­dered by a falling com­peti­tor at the last leg.

Richard Thomp­son tried his best against an amaz­ing 100m field where even a toe-nail can make a dif­fer­ence. I feel con­fi­dent that every Jack and Jacque­line gave their all to make us proud and the last thing they need is to come home to a bar­rage of neg­a­tives. Please don't get me wrong. I am all for con­struc­tive crit­i­cism, set­ting high goals and reach­ing for the stars in­stead of the moun­tain peaks. How­ev­er, I am al­so for an over­dose of en­cour­age­ment, mo­ti­va­tion, sen­si­tiv­i­ty, look­ing for the pos­i­tives even if they are some­times hard to find; mak­ing young peo­ple feel spe­cial and im­por­tant and part of the team; coach­es mask­ing their per­son­al dis­ap­point­ment and frus­tra­tion; un­der­stand­ing that on oc­ca­sion the dis­ap­point­ed ath­lete needs a qui­et hug and a shoul­der to lean on more than any­thing else. Choice of words, tone of voice and sense of tim­ing are cru­cial com­po­nents of con­struc­tive crit­i­cism. I do not be­lieve that any bats­man de­lib­er­ate­ly makes "duck"; any foot­baller miss­es a penal­ty on pur­pose or any ath­lete de­cides to fin­ish last on a giv­en day. There is some­thing in each of us known as per­son­al pride.

Re­fer­ring back to my open­ing para­graph, I al­ways ex­pect our foot­ball team to beat the likes of Bermu­da, Bar­ba­dos and oth­er Caribbean ter­ri­to­ries, and our crick­et team to win the Re­gion­al se­ries sim­ply be­cause they are up against com­pa­ra­ble tal­ent. How­ev­er, when it comes to in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion, while I ex­pect 150 per­cent ef­fort and com­mit­ment, I sug­gest that ex­pec­ta­tions re­gard­ing vic­to­ry should be more rea­son­able. As long as you give your all every minute of the game or race and hap­pen to lose, I can live with that. My four chil­dren were all very good com­pet­i­tive swim­mers in Cana­da and they trained hard every day for years. They won many races and al­so lost many but they knew they had on­ly one ques­tion to an­swer – "did you give it your to­tal ef­fort from start to fin­ish?" My son Dou­glas won lots of medals but when he swam against Olympic Gold Medal win­ner Alex Bau­mann, did I re­al­ly ex­pect him to win? If my kids did their best then in my eyes they were gen­uine win­ners even if they fin­ished last. That's how I judge our na­tion­al play­ers and ath­letes, since no per­son ever born has been able to do bet­ter than his/her best. Hav­ing said that, se­lec­tors keep pick­ing play­ers who are not pro­duc­ing – best or no best! Whose fault is that?

Every Sun­day morn­ing it is my priv­i­lege to meet with 35 teenagers ac­cused of the worst of crimes. I know what they did; I am aware of their fam­i­ly back­grounds but I al­so know that as hu­man be­ings, de­spite fail­ing so­ci­ety, what they need most is to be told they are spe­cial, they mat­ter, they are loved, there is hope and there are peo­ple will­ing to hold their hands to help them to hap­pi­er times. They teach me more about hu­man be­hav­iour and what counts in life (which al­so ap­plies to all ath­letes) than any Uni­ver­si­ty course and the hon­est truth is I can­not wait for Sun­day morn­ings to be­come a wis­er per­son. I can pro­vide Sel­wyn Ryan's task force with 80 per­cent of what they need to know about what caus­es crim­i­nal­i­ty even though every half in­tel­li­gent per­son al­ready knows the an­swers. Why do we keep rein­vent­ing the wheel? Je­sus said the sec­ond most im­por­tant com­mand­ment is to love your neigh­bour as your­self. Let us use the cur­few and SoE to re­de­fine "love"; re­de­fine our "neigh­bour" and re­de­fine our own life val­ues. Then 2012 will be a won­der­ful year in beau­ti­ful T&T. Say your prayers and keep smil­ing.

P.S. A spe­cial "hap­py 80th birth­day" (Sept. 06) to my good friend "Boboy" Ma­haraj and thanks for all the many won­der­ful things you have done to keep rac­ing alive es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the "dark hours" of the 1990's.