Dr Cliff Bertrand

(The first part of this ar­ti­cle en­ti­tled: 'Build­ing a pipeline to Olympic medals' was car­ried in last Fri­day's Guardian)

El­e­ments nec­es­sary to the in­fra­struc­ture of the ath­lete de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme in­clude fund­ing as the first el­e­ment. Every com­po­nent re­quires mon­ey to suc­cess­ful­ly de­vel­op a con­tin­u­ous stream of elite ath­letes.

The Sports Com­pa­ny and not the TTOC de­mands suc­cess and re­wards suc­cess. There is in­cen­tive-based mon­ey for in­di­vid­ual ath­letes. This is pri­mar­i­ly based on the num­ber and lev­el of suc­cess. This pro­gramme was most re­cent­ly called "ven­ture" sup­port. It al­lows ath­letes to train and hire their own sup­port per­son­nel with­out need­ing a full-time job. This is ex­cep­tion­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial to ath­letes: big-time cars, well-fur­nished lux­u­ry apart­ments, un­bri­dled phone us­age, writ­ing checks as nev­er be­fore. With all this ac­tiv­i­ty go­ing on, ath­letes still com­plain about late mon­ey ar­rival and no mon­ey for bills in­curred. Health in­sur­ance is giv­en to sup­port the top-lev­el ath­letes. The Sports Com­pa­ny is re­spon­si­ble for some ba­sic in­ci­den­tals fund­ing ac­tiv­i­ties.

NAAA of­fi­cials abuse these priv­i­lege. They are on record for lim­ing and din­ing lav­ish­ly at Movi­etowne restau­rants af­ter each meet­ing. 1. Fa­cil­i­ties are key in­fra­struc­tur­al el­e­ments to de­vel­op­ing ath­letes. There is no em­pir­i­cal ev­i­dence to show that the qual­i­ty of fa­cil­i­ties will be­yond a rea­son­able doubt im­prove an ath­lete's de­vel­op­ment. The Cana­di­an Olympic Com­mit­tee stat­ed that one goal was to in­crease na­tion­wide par­tic­i­pa­tion in sport through in­creased fa­cil­i­ties. Sau­di Ara­bia de­vel­oped a na­tion­al plan for the de­vel­op­ment and pro­mo­tion of sport; it in­clud­ed fa­cil­i­ties through­out the coun­try (1996). The Sports Com­pa­ny op­er­ates strate­gi­cal­ly lo­cat­ed train­ing sites, around the coun­try. These fa­cil­i­ties are shared by NSOs and are pri­mar­i­ly used by ath­letes at the elite lev­el Per­son­nel are the third in­fra­struc­tur­al el­e­ment. They are lim­it­ed to those di­rect­ly in­volved with the ath­letes' de­vel­op­ment.

The Sports Com­pa­ny sup­plies per­for­mance en­hance­ment teams. They con­sist of ex­perts in sport sci­ence, sport med­i­cine, and sport psy­chol­o­gy. They are salaried by The Sports Com­pa­ny. Coach­es are cru­cial to the de­vel­op­ment of ath­letes at every lev­el. It is a pri­or­i­ty in de­vel­op­ing the ath­letes' full po­ten­tial (In­ter­na­tion­al Fo­rum on Elite Sport, 2001). Brown (2001) char­ac­teris­es the lev­els of coach­ing ath­letes through­out their de­vel­op­ment. First-lev­el coach­es must make the sport fun. They must com­mu­ni­cate well with chil­dren. Sec­ond-lev­el coach­es are strict tech­ni­cians. They must un­der­stand the ef­fort an ath­lete puts out to ob­tain elite sta­tus. Third-lev­el coach­es take ath­letes to the pin­na­cle of their suc­cess. Be­yond this, there is lit­tle frame­work that de­tails the fac­tors most im­por­tant in the coach­ing process.

Many coun­tries cite the need for con­tin­u­ous de­vel­op­ment of coach­es. Ja­maica ex­em­pli­fies this do­main ex­cep­tion­al­ly well. High-per­for­mance sport coach­es are re­quired to par­tic­i­pate in on­go­ing train­ing and pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment. T&T must de­vise ini­tia­tives to raise the stan­dard for be­com­ing a coach. A lad­der must be es­tab­lished to mir­ror the de­vel­op­ment of ath­letes and coach­es. It de­fines pro­gres­sion to reach the elite lev­el. Un­less there is a long and in­ten­sive process of en­cour­age­ment, nur­tu­rance, ed­u­ca­tion, and train­ing, the in­di­vid­u­als will not at­tain ex­treme lev­els of ca­pa­bil­i­ty in their par­tic­u­lar field. NSOs must un­der­stand cer­tain in­nate abil­i­ties, psy­cho­log­i­cal and phys­i­o­log­i­cal at­trib­ut­es as key el­e­ments in de­vel­op­ing elite ath­letes. The ath­lete shows char­ac­ter­is­tics of joy­ful­ness, play­ful­ness, and ex­cite­ment from ages 6-13, when the goal of the ath­lete is to par­tic­i­pate in as many sports as pos­si­ble. The mid­dle years-the spe­cial­is­ing years-hap­pen from ages 13-15. Sport still re­mains fun but a fo­cus de­vel­ops on one or two sports and prac­tice time in­creas­es.

In the lat­er years, the ath­lete is con­sumed, re­spon­si­ble, and ob­sessed. These be­gin around age 15, and are al­so marked by a com­mit­ment to one sport. Fi­nal­ly, the per­fec­tion years be­gin at 18, when the ath­lete is con­cerned with the main­te­nance and per­fec­tion of skills. Look at Ki­rani James of Grena­da, Yohan Blake of Ja­maica as ex­am­ples of youth­ful dis­tinc­tion. What plans does the NAAA have for Michelle Ahye, Ce­de­no, Mur­rain, Jamol James, Darvin Sandy, De­siree Harp­er, Lalonde Gor­don, Nathaniel and Jonathon Far­in­ha, Bellille, El­ton Wal­cott, Ayan­na Alexan­der to men­tion a few ath­letes? I await the an­swer!