?Hugh Hen­der­son

I used to say half-jok­ing­ly that if Mt Ever­est was the longest climb in the world, the longest walk was go­ing down Fred­er­ick Street on a Mon­day with Wes Hall try­ing to reach In­de­pen­dence Square be­fore the week­end. Wes had to talk ad nau­se­am to every in­di­vid­ual we passed, on any top­ic un­der the sun, and I swear it was on those oc­ca­sions I learned to man­age my pa­tience and frus­tra­tion. It has tak­en an equal­ly long "walk" for Wes to re­ceive his knight­hood and while I con­grat­u­late him now and ex­press my great plea­sure, I need an en­tire ar­ti­cle next week to deal with the sub­ject since Wes and I worked hand in hand for three years at WIT­CO (1966-69), along with Jean Reid. Fan­tas­tic news Sir Wes! I of­fer a quick thank you to those gra­cious enough to say nice things about my let­ter last week to De­nesh Ramdin. I know a lot about Ramdin from oth­ers but I have spo­ken to him on­ly three times so it is not a case of pro­tect­ing a friend in the lit­er­al sense. I sim­ply be­lieve that where pos­si­ble we should be gen­er­ous in our think­ing and ac­cept that we all say and do things we re­gret every day.

Con­grats and sin­cere thanks to THA (To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly) for spon­sor­ing the San­ta Rosa race card on Labour Day. It was an ex­cel­lent ef­fort and ful­ly de­served the sup­port of the bet­ter than usu­al crowd which en­joyed the nov­el­ty of the two goat races-amaz­ing what "dif­fer­ence" can make to a rou­tine week­ly event. THA brought back mem­o­ries of past "big" race days with an im­pres­sive dis­play of beau­ti­ful tro­phies for all nine races which evoked many com­pli­ments with­in my hear­ing.

Well done to SIR Sta­ble on the mas­sive vic­to­ry of their colt Ig­ni­tion Coil, and a spe­cial pat on the back to jock­ey Bri­an Boodram­s­ingh for rid­ing three win­ners. Boodram­s­ingh has al­ways been known for his hu­mil­i­ty, good man­ners and re­spect for au­thor­i­ty, and now for his ob­vi­ous rid­ing skills since he is far ahead of all jock­eys in the 1st-2nd -3rd -4th sta­tis­ti­cal ta­ble.

As im­por­tant, Boodram­s­ingh nev­er fails to re­mem­ber his God when he en­ters the win­ner's en­clo­sure al­ways send­ing a vis­i­ble mes­sage of grat­i­tude to the "Man" up­stairs. To think Boodram­s­ingh will be on­ly 21 next month – quite a guy!

A step back in time

Three per­son­al mem­o­ries of To­ba­go races in­volved (a) as a young man be­ing in­vit­ed by the late Ains­ley Far­fan to buy a share of his horse "Drum­beat" be­cause it was "sure to win a race in To­ba­go next month". Sure enough, "Drum­beat" rid­den by Dal­ton Lutch­man won, and Mary (nee Gat­cliffe) and I lead in. Every sum­mer when I see Mary in Cana­da we re­mem­ber what must sure­ly be the most fa­mous lead-in in rac­ing his­to­ry. (b) Hon John O'Hal­lo­ran was de­ter­mined to own a horse for the 1965 Der­by and the one he want­ed was "Spy Song" which I owned with Chris Krogh. Spy Song was a huge, ug­ly fil­ly but won two races in To­ba­go which caused John­ny O to live in my skin to sell Spy Song. Even­tu­al­ly he told me to name my price and I said "$4,000" think­ing that would get rid of him. Lit­tle did I know he had ten times as much in his shirt pock­et, and I watched sad­ly as Spy Song left the sta­ble of Bob­by Hard­widge at Jern­ing­ham Junc­tion. The Der­by was two months lat­er on Box­ing Day and I hard­ly slept for weeks hop­ing I had not for­feit­ed my place in rac­ing his­to­ry own­ing a Der­by win­ner. I can still see Spy Song run­ning fifth at the Sham­rock Bend and NOT look­ing like a win­ner and I think that fifth is where she fin­ished. Whew!

(c) In 1972 when I was gen­er­al brands man­ag­er at Lever Broth­eres, some­how the com­pa­ny got in­volved with a Lux pro­mo­tion at Shir­van Park, To­ba­go. At the last nano-sec­ond, the se­lect­ed "Miss Lux" fell ill, and the on­ly pos­si­ble re­place­ment I could think of was my beau­ti­ful wife but then had to choose be­tween risk­ing pos­si­ble di­vorce and pro­mot­ing com­pa­ny im­age. When I meek­ly pre­sent­ed my case, she sur­prised me say­ing: "Well, if you don't mind Miss Lux hav­ing four chil­dren, I guess it might be fun" and as ex­pect­ed she was the prover­bial "Belle of the Ball" and a rous­ing suc­cess. Miss Lux has been mar­ried 46 years to the same man, turned 70 last week, has 10 grand­chil­dren and looks ex­act­ly as she did giv­ing out Lux sam­ples at To­ba­go races in 1972. Whew!

Gym­nas­tics at its best

Last Sun­day, I at­tend­ed the Gym­nas­tics na­tion­als at Wood­brook Youth Cen­tre and thor­ough­ly en­joyed the ob­vi­ous en­thu­si­asm of the many young girls as they warmed up in the four dis­ci­plines, cheered on by fam­i­ly and friends. I en­joy gym­nas­tics start­ing with ad­mir­ing the ex­quis­ite skills of Ro­man­ian ge­nius Na­dia Co­manechi in the 1976 Olympics. I even per­suad­ed a friend to name one of his hors­es "Co­manechi" which turned out to be a use­ful win­ner. On Sun­day, the most sat­is­fy­ing part was wit­ness­ing the start of a new sport which will cer­tain­ly grow in time, and we must en­cour­age the coach­es and par­ents to stick with it to en­sure the flower blooms in the bright­est colours. Hav­ing elec­tron­ic score­boards with the com­peti­tor's name, added some healthy pro­fes­sion­al­ism. Well done or­gan­is­ers and keep up the good work!

Keep reach­ing for the stars

Con­grats to the Min­istry of Sport for pro­vid­ing young, world ranked javelin throw­er Keshorn Wal­cott with state of the art spears. The fact that he hails from To­co in­ter­ests me, as I have writ­ten sev­er­al times what Hase­ly Craw­ford told me years ago: "If you want to find nat­ur­al ath­letes, look in To­co, Ma­yaro and Ce­dros where they have eat­en a lot of healthy "blue food" and walked miles to school every day to build up their mus­cles." Good luck Wal­cott! Hav­ing trum­pet­ed his cause many times, I was de­light­ed to see Kier­an Pow­ell scor­ing 139 and 56* to lead West In­dies A to vic­to­ry over In­dia A. Like many oth­ers, Pow­ell did not set the world on fire in Eng­land, but to me his class is ob­vi­ous and now that he has been made cap­tain of the A team, his self-es­teem should soar to ad­van­tage. Take your time Pow­ell and keep scor­ing "big!"

While it ap­pears that mys­tery spin­ner Sunil Nar­ine may have gone off the boil for now, let us make sure we keep as­sur­ing him that we have deep faith in him and his out­stand­ing abil­i­ty. Life has its up and downs and we have to learn to man­age our dis­ap­point­ments and frus­tra­tions as we all ex­pe­ri­ence the oc­ca­sion­al bad day or tough time. Keep smil­ing Nar­ine –it will all come back soon! Dwayne Bra­vo has climbed enor­mous­ly in my es­ti­ma­tion. He is such a nat­ur­al ath­lete and with his won­der­ful ex­u­ber­ance, watch­ing him hit those scin­til­lat­ing strokes and mak­ing al­most im­pos­si­ble stops in the field, is pure joy. Thanks Bra­vo! I was told re­cent­ly that we still need to pray a lot for the re­cov­ery of Jus­tice Wen­dell Kan­ga­loo which I en­cour­age all to do. As well, we must not for­get the fam­i­ly and friends of the four young peo­ple who died in the trag­ic car ac­ci­dent. They too need God's grace, strength and courage to cope with their sad­ness and we join our prayers to theirs.

Joseph on top

It is with great pride that I con­grat­u­late young Brit­tany Joseph for cop­ping the Ladies Na­tion­al Sin­gles ta­ble ten­nis ti­tle in Ch­agua­nas last Wednes­day to add to her na­tion­al dou­bles ti­tle. Joseph is a first year schol­ar­ship win­ner in the Daren Gan­ga Foun­da­tion and has im­proved in leaps and bounds in the past two years with ex­tra coach­ing and build­ing her self-con­fi­dence and men­tal tough­ness in com­pe­ti­tions. She turned 14 last week and with hard work and ex­po­sure on the in­ter­na­tion­al scene, should en­joy an im­pres­sive ca­reer. I do not en­vy sports re­porters with the va­ri­ety of sport now in fo­cus - ODIs (One Day In­ter­na­tion­al), T20's (Twen­ty20), Test match­es, Eu­ro 2012 semi­fi­nals and fi­nal; Sagi­cor Na­tion­al Cham­pi­onships/Olympic tri­als for our lo­cal ath­letes; Wim­ble­don start­ing to­day; Tour de France with cham­pi­on Andy Schleck out with a spinal in­jury, lo­cal foot­ball com­pe­ti­tions; NBA fi­nals, horse rac­ing, Cab­i­net reshuf­fles - you name it! When the Tarou­ba Com­plex was ap­proved cir­ca 2006, I wrote sug­gest­ing that the then $250 mil­lion es­ti­mate be di­vid­ed so that 25 rur­al com­mu­ni­ties could each en­joy a $10m sports fa­cil­i­ty. Sev­er­al oth­ers joined the cho­rus. About a year ago, I re­peat­ed the same sug­ges­tion when I read of pro­posed large lawn ten­nis court and swim­ming pool com­plex­es.

I do not think that one has to be re­lat­ed to Ein­stein to sug­gest such an ob­vi­ous op­tion so to read now that some ge­nius in Min­istry of Sport has sud­den­ly come up with the bril­liant idea to in­tro­duce a pro­gramme of sports in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties is stretch­ing cred­i­bil­i­ty and po­lit­i­cal spin to its lim­its. While I am de­light­ed that such a pro­gramme may be im­ple­ment­ed when­ev­er, it is hard­ly an orig­i­nal con­cept. In se­ri­ous vein, I beg every cit­i­zen to do what it takes to turn around the at­ti­tude and cul­ture of our once beau­ti­ful coun­try. Each of us has the pow­er of choice to do right or do wrong – it is up to us and no-one else is to blame. For what my opin­ion is worth, I see dark days ahead be­cause we have be­come a na­tion of greed – just look at what some lawyers are paid as an ex­am­ple. It makes me sick and ashamed at times to be a Tri­ni.

God bless you and yours in His own spe­cial way and please do not give up hope.