Sean Nero

Bri­an Lewis, gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC), on Wednes­day de­clared there was one young man in lo­cal sports who was the epit­o­me of a ti­tan and his name is Marc Burns.

"That's a leader and that's a pa­tri­ot. That's stand­ing up for what he be­lieves and that's prin­ci­ple. If you can't spell the word pa­tri­ot and you don't know what a pa­tri­ot is or means, you just have to look at Marc Burns," he said.

Lewis was speak­ing at the con­tin­u­a­tion of the four-day sport sym­po­sium be­ing held at the Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre ti­tled No Pain, No Gain pro­duced by The Sports Desk. Lewis was in­vit­ed to speak to 300 sec­ondary school stu­dents on the top­ic: The Prin­ci­ple.

"If every­body in this room could achieve 50 per cent of what he has done for this coun­try, you'll be a hell of a young man or young woman. This is an in­di­vid­ual–as is typ­i­cal in T&T–who is un­der­val­ued be­cause he may not be as flam­bouyant as oth­ers, but he has loy­al­ty and com­mit­ment," he said.

To qual­i­fy his state­ment, Lewis turned the at­ten­tion of the au­di­ence back to the 2007 Pan Am Games when this coun­try was close to not com­pet­ing in the 4x100-me­tre re­lay be­cause ath­letes be­ing con­sid­ered were ei­ther re­cov­er­ing from in­jury or had clash­ing sched­ules.

"Marc Burns stood up and told his team­mates and all of T&T, that T&T will run in the re­lay...We have an at­ti­tude in T&T, that when we reach, we for­get. It is a fact. So when it comes to at­tend­ing games such as the Pan Am Games, Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean Games and Com­mon­wealth Games, aside from the Olympic Games, chal­lenges oc­cur and some­times not all of our best ath­letes are avail­able. Their sched­ules may not per­mit it. That has nev­er been the case with Marc Burns," he said.

Lewis added, "The biggest ob­sta­cle in achiev­ing what­ev­er you may de­fine as suc­cess is your­self. We are very good at mak­ing ex­cus­es and hid­ing and run­ning from re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and look­ing for the easy way out. All of you are teenagers. Each of you has to take full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the choic­es that you make and shap­ing your own des­tiny. There's no ex­cuse."

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