Car­la Rauseo

I was lis­ten­ing to the pro­gramme "Mixed Nuts" on Ra­dio 105FM some Fri­day morn­ings ago, and was very pleas­ant­ly sur­prised to hear George Bovell III speak­ing as a guest on the show. Nat­u­ral­ly, the top­ic of con­ver­sa­tion was swim­ming, and the talk show hosts were ask­ing Bovell about the evo­lu­tion and progress of the sport and its pro­mo­tion in T&T. Bovell had a lot to say, and much of what he dis­cussed could be ap­plied to most sports, if not to all, in T&T. The con­ver­sa­tion ad­dressed the prob­lem of the lack of pop­u­lar­i­ty of swim­ming as a spec­ta­tor sport and the dif­fi­cul­ties of pro­mot­ing it. The fact is that most spec­ta­tors at swim meets are par­ents and maybe even a few friends. This is re­flec­tive of the youth­ful pop­u­la­tion made up of kids and ado­les­cents in­volved in swim­ming. But what of the longevi­ty of the ath­letes? Why do we not have more adult swim meets? The an­swer is as sim­ple as the fact that we have very few adult swim­mers who choose to com­pete. Those who are good enough to make it to in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion are lost to schol­ar­ships and greater op­por­tu­ni­ty in for­eign coun­tries.

Oth­ers suc­cumb to the ever-pop­u­lar shoul­der in­jury, a con­se­quence of poor in­jury pre­ven­tion pro­grammes and sub­stan­dard pe­ri­odi­s­a­tion by their coach­es with a lack of ac­cess to qual­i­ty in­jury re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion. Such in­juries force the ath­letes in­to ear­ly re­tire­ment. Sim­i­lar com­ments can be made for vol­ley­ball, and wa­ter po­lo, to name a few. This is not to say that watch­ing ado­les­cents and chil­dren swim in in­ter­na­tion­al meets is not ex­cit­ing. How­ev­er, there is some­thing to be said for adult com­pe­ti­tio maybe adults re­late more to their peers com­pet­ing. Is there is a greater ap­pre­ci­a­tion of adult ath­leti­cism as grown-ups can un­der­stand how dif­fi­cult it is to per­form such feats? Apart from the lack of high­ly com­pet­i­tive adult swim­mers, the ma­jor is­sue is the poor pro­mo­tion of swim­ming events. There is no in­cen­tive for the spec­ta­tor, nor for any for­eign ath­lete to come to a meet in Trinidad. Bovell stat­ed that he makes a liv­ing by trav­el­ing to oth­er coun­tries which pro­vide mon­e­tary in­cen­tives to at­tract in­ter­na­tion­al swim­mers to their meets. T&T does no such thing. Crick­et is in the same boat. Bra­vo is now a Chen­nai Su­per King, rather than a Tri­ni, a vic­tim of the almighty dol­lar.

But who can blame him? I guess there is no Jack Warn­er of swim­ming or crick­et who can "pull strings" fi­nan­cial­ly or oth­er­wise for T&T to host a "Swim­ming World Cup" or keep its crick­eters. So brain drain in the pro­fes­sion­al world has its coun­ter­part in sports-brawn drain. If all the top ath­letes are lost, then who would at­tract spec­ta­tors? In ad­di­tion, spec­ta­tors and spon­sors would cer­tain­ly not be will­ing to pay the big bucks to see medi­oc­rity, so the pro­mo­tion of the sport with­out the big wigs is fi­nan­cial­ly risky. Bovell and the hosts sug­gest­ed pro­mot­ing a "George Bovell vs The World" swim meet in T&T. I some­how find it hard to be­lieve that Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte would en­ter­tain swim­ming a meet in Trinidad, un­less some big bucks were in­volved. There was some dis­cus­sion about hav­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al meet in To­ba­go. Maybe the pro­mo­tion of our is­land par­adise would en­cour­age the top swim­mers to con­sid­er a meet here in their off sea­son, not for fi­nan­cial re­ward, but to bask in the warm Caribbean sun­shine and en­joy a taste of is­land life.

So how else to pro­mote the sport of swim­ming? The dis­cus­sion con­tin­ued and was led by one of the talk show hosts in­to a down­ward spi­ral of dis­re­spect­ful, in­ap­pro­pri­ate and taste­less sug­ges­tions, de­spite the sub­tle ef­forts of Bovell to change to a more in­tel­lec­tu­al tone. This host thought that if the women swam in thongs, sure­ly the spec­ta­tor­ship would in­crease! Sure­ly! Not on­ly was the com­ment in poor taste on na­tion­al ra­dio, but it triv­i­alised the sport and skill of the ath­lete, and the chal­lenges he must con­quer with long hours of as­sid­u­ous prac­tice and ef­fort. It be­lit­tled the ath­let­ic feat and un­der­scored his ig­no­rance of the ath­lete's lifestyle. The com­ment was re­flec­tive of the way sport is viewed in T&T. Bovell said it with re­spect to coach­es. He stat­ed that we do not re­spect our coach­es. Coach­es in the East­ern Block coun­tries are re­gard­ed in as much the same way as are doc­tors. With­out re­spect, there is lit­tle sup­port and if our lo­cal coach­es must fight and strug­gle for every ounce of mon­ey, equip­ment, uni­form and train­ing lo­ca­tion, then how is the sport to be suc­cess­ful?

Sport is still viewed by most as just recre­ation. "So you're a coach? That's a hob­by, that's not a re­al job!" This is re­flect­ed in the salaries of most coach­es. "You swim for a liv­ing? Must be nice!" It is su­per­fi­cial recre­ation for lo­cal fans, where they go to lime. One goes to a Test crick­et match nowa­days, and those that are there are the se­ri­ous, an­a­lyt­i­cal fans, who ap­pre­ci­ate the crit­i­cal think­ing and prob­lem solv­ing chal­lenges of the sport, as well as the ath­let­ic skill and tal­ent that is re­quired of the ath­lete. If one is not a die-hard crick­et fan, what in­cen­tive is there in a test match? Com­pare this with the ex­cite­ment of a T-20 match, and one re­alis­es that the ma­jor­i­ty of spec­ta­tors are fans of the lime. The chal­lenges in the pro­mo­tion of swim­ming and oth­er sports are many and di­verse. Not on­ly are they mon­e­tary, but cul­tur­al and be­hav­iour­al as well. Be­lit­tling the ath­lete with sex­u­al in­nu­en­dos on na­tion­al ra­dio high­lights the very long, me­an­der­ing and rocky rapids we must swim in or­der to make such changes in at­ti­tude. How we ne­go­ti­ate these rapids will de­ter­mine if sport in T&T will sink or swim. I sug­gest we do not do it in thongs.

Car­la Rauseo PT, MS, CSCS, is a state-reg­is­tered and li­censed phys­io­ther­a­pist and a cer­ti­fied strength and con­di­tion­ing spe­cial­ist. She can be con­tact­ed at: To­tal Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre Lim­it­ed, 1 Chanka Trace, El So­cor­ro (868-675-4973)