An­dre E Bap­tiste

Now that the eu­pho­ria has re­ced­ed, we can be­gin to clin­i­cal­ly as­sess the per­for­mance of our ath­letes at the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Lon­don Olympics. With an over­all tal­ly of four medals, a gold and three bronze, the coun­try needs to de­ter­mine whether our ath­letes let us down or whether we have let them down over the years. First of all, let us get one myth out of the way-Ja­maica has no nat­ur­al God-giv­en abil­i­ty that sets them apart from the rest of the Caribbean. The re­sult earned by every com­peti­tor is a re­sult of hard work and the sup­port that they have se­cured through­out his or her ca­reer. I have high­light­ed four words that I will come back to time and time again.

The first word is "and." Each suc­cess­ful ath­lete needs that "and" to achieve suc­cess. The ath­lete must be pre­pared to do the hard work nec­es­sary "and" they must get the sup­port re­quired to fa­cil­i­tate that suc­cess. Sup­port re­quired: This sup­port is not just words of com­men­da­tion, a na­tion­al hol­i­day to cel­e­brate suc­cess, chest pound­ing by those in au­thor­i­ty, a mo­ti­va­tion­al song or even me­dia cov­er­age. We are talk­ing about some­thing much more sub­stan­tial and some­thing which be­gins long be­fore the suc­cess has been achieved.

The sup­port re­quired be­gins with putting the prop­er in­fra­struc­ture in place to iden­ti­fy tal­ent. Like the Ja­maicans, this must be­gin at the pri­ma­ry school lev­el. Once the fire has been ig­nit­ed and the tal­ent iden­ti­fied, there must be greater sup­port pro­vid­ed to the lo­cal clubs. Most clubs, such as Mem­phis, Phoenix, etc are bare­ly able to sur­vive and re­ly on pri­vate spon­sor­ship for ba­sic ameni­ties. There should be gov­ern­ment-owned and fund­ed fa­cil­i­ties to which these clubs are pro­vid­ed free ac­cess. The goal is to be sure that we iden­ti­fy as ear­ly as pos­si­ble our ath­letes with po­ten­tial to make it on the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el. Once this is ac­com­plished, we can­not de­pend on for­eign scouts to of­fer spon­sor­ships to study abroad. As a coun­try, we have to be pre­pared to fund the de­vel­op­ment of these ath­letes. Some­times this de­vel­op­ment may not in­clude stud­ies. We have all heard the sto­ry of Njisane Phillip who fo­cused on his cy­cling to the ex­clu­sion of his stud­ies once he found he had the pas­sion for it. Then we hear the sto­ries about, among oth­ers, the Aus­tralian, Chi­nese, Russ­ian ath­letes whose full-time ca­reer is im­prov­ing their ath­let­ic abil­i­ty. Their progress is fund­ed by their na­tion­al gov­ern­ments.

Why do we think that hap­pens? Is it for the ego of the gov­ern­ment? I don't think so. Is it be­cause of the per­son­al agen­da of some­one in­flu­en­tial in gov­ern­ment? I don't think so. Is it be­cause some­one knows some­one? I don't think so. Those would usu­al­ly be the con­sid­er­a­tions that make some­thing hap­pen here in T&T, but that is not the case abroad. Most of these gov­ern­ments see ath­let­ic suc­cess as the best ad­ver­tise­ment of the coun­try. More peo­ple will know Ja­maica be­cause of the suc­cess of Us­ain Bolt than be­cause of any in­vest­ment in tourism pro­mo­tion. It was much the same when Bri­an Lara was so fab­u­lous­ly suc­cess­ful dur­ing his crick­et ca­reer. Peo­ple could re­al­ly on­ly re­late to T&T when you men­tioned that it was the coun­try of birth of Bri­an Lara. Suc­cess­ful ath­letes are the best pro­mo­tion­al ma­te­r­i­al for any coun­try. T&T tends to jump on the band­wag­on of an ath­lete's suc­cess af­ter it has been achieved. Are we sur­prised then that we have so few band­wag­ons to jump on? Suc­cess breeds suc­cess. I doubt we have many ju­nior ath­letes be­ing in­spired to work hard­er by our se­mi-fi­nal­ists when com­pared to the ju­nior ath­letes in Ja­maica be­ing in­spired by Bolt, Blake, Pryce, et al. And to think we had Hase­ly Craw­ford!

The sup­port of the gov­ern­ment does not in any way ob­vi­ate the need for cor­po­rate spon­sors to be­come more in­volved. Of­ten enough, once an ath­lete has achieved suc­cess at the world stage, cor­po­rate spon­sors tend to fall over them­selves to get a piece of that ath­lete. I am sure the ath­lete would not turn down what­ev­er as­sis­tance is pro­vid­ed, but truth be told, they need that as­sis­tance much more when his or her ca­reer is in its in­fan­cy. Cor­po­rate spon­sors need to come out of their com­fort zone and get be­hind T&T ath­letes from a much ear­li­er stage. Some will suc­ceed, and some won't but they need to get be­hind the young men and women as they seek to ac­com­plish their am­bi­tions. Their jour­ney will do those spon­sors proud and not every in­vest­ment need be about mileage for the com­pa­ny; some­times the good of the coun­try mat­ters.

The sec­ond half of the equa­tion is the hard work of the ath­lete. Us­ain Bolt in­di­cat­ed that af­ter his de­feat at the legs of Blake in the Ja­maican tri­als, he got the wake-up call that he ob­vi­ous­ly need­ed to step up his game. And he ob­vi­ous­ly did that. Hope­ful­ly, our ath­letes have re­ceived a sim­i­lar wake-up call fol­low­ing this Olympics.

From an ex­ter­nal per­spec­tive, the re­silience of some of our ath­letes could have been called in­to ques­tion in the past. The oth­er com­po­nent is their phys­i­cal re­silience. This again is where the fi­nan­cial sup­port is so nec­es­sary.

Our ath­letes need to train hard, com­pete fre­quent­ly and nour­ish them­selves thor­ough­ly. At that lev­el, un­less they work on to­tal body fit­ness, par­tic­u­lar­ly at their cores, in­juries be­come a big risk. There can be no com­pro­mise.

T&T's ath­letes are not in­fe­ri­or to ath­letes from any oth­er part of the world. There is noth­ing that any of them are do­ing that we can­not al­so achieve. Let us re­solve to give them our full sup­port and they in turn pledge to work as hard as they phys­i­cal­ly can to take them­selves to the next lev­el. If that so­cial con­tract is made, Brazil 2016 could be our year for more Olympic gold.