In the last two sum­mer Olympic Games in 2020 and 2024, the T&T con­tin­gent re­turned home with noth­ing to show for their ef­forts. When one looks fur­ther back to 2016, the T&T team on­ly had one bronze medal to show for their ef­forts.

The once-fa­mil­iar roar of na­tion­al pride has been re­placed by a col­lec­tive groan. What has gone wrong? If you ex­pect me to blame the Olympians, you may as well stop read­ing be­cause that will not hap­pen. Our ath­letes/war­riors un­doubt­ed­ly gave their hearts and souls, and even though they did not medal, no one could fault their com­mit­ment and dri­ve, but the ad­min­is­tra­tion failed them.

To be frank, I am un­sure how we as­sess what tran­spired in Paris. Do the cur­rent prob­lems stem from a lack of tal­ent among the ath­letes or a lack of prop­er guid­ance from those in charge of the var­i­ous per­son­nel? I re­mem­ber at­tend­ing the 2012 Games in Lon­don and in the af­ter­math of Keshorn Wal­cott’s gold medal, a pub across the street from the ho­tel where I was stay­ing sud­den­ly filled up with Trin­bag­o­ni­ans. Whether you were a res­i­dent of the Unit­ed King­dom (UK) or vis­it­ing the eu­pho­ria of T&T win­ning a gold medal, this made you feel proud, and you could not care less if the UK had bagged 50 medals.

The tiny twin-is­land Caribbean coun­try with 1.34 mil­lion peo­ple punch­ing above its weight for decades was mak­ing their mark and pres­ence in one of the most es­teemed sport­ing events on the plan­et.

It was af­ter this that my good friend, for­mer T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) pres­i­dent Bri­an Lewis, pre­dict­ed or start­ed the push for ten golds by 2024. I thought to my­self, “Hold on, Bri­an, are you get­ting car­ried away?” But, he is an eter­nal op­ti­mist try­ing to cre­ate in­ter­est and hop­ing to get the nec­es­sary fund­ing to make his pre­dic­tion a re­al­i­ty. We will con­tin­ue to live in hope.

I much pre­fer to go with Ato Boldon's pre­dic­tion that it may take T&T some 20 years be­fore the coun­try can win an­oth­er gold medal. Boldon, T&T’s sprint­ing leg­end, has been sound­ing this alarm for years. His warn­ings, like those of a prophet in the wilder­ness, have been met with in­dif­fer­ence. Many have a way in this coun­try and, by ex­ten­sion, in the Caribbean when some­one, es­pe­cial­ly a for­mer ath­lete, speaks the truth, the pow­ers that be take it as crit­i­cism and brush it aside with some sil­ly com­ment about him/her be­ing jeal­ous or he/she is look­ing for a po­si­tion in­stead of try­ing to analyse what the in­di­vid­ual has said and take the good out of the state­ment and try and put it in­to con­text. It's as if we'd rather bask in the af­ter­glow of past glo­ries than con­front the harsh re­al­i­ty of the present fail­ures.

There­fore, I am not for one mo­ment say­ing Boldon is com­plete­ly right, but this is T&T's most dec­o­rat­ed ath­lete, so he may just have some idea of what to do and what not to do. He has said cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly that our ad­min­is­tra­tors have failed our ath­letes. If that is true since 2020, why are most of the same in­di­vid­u­als there in 2024? I don’t have a clue, but that is a ques­tion for the ath­let­ic fra­ter­ni­ty to an­swer, and they must hold in­di­vid­u­als ac­count­able. 

Hase­ly Craw­ford is an­oth­er in­di­vid­ual who must be hurt­ing. Has any­one reached out to him to ask him his thoughts on why T&T is strug­gling to win medals at two con­sec­u­tive Olympic Games? I know he is ex­treme­ly pas­sion­ate about sports. Al­though he must have been over­joyed to sit next to the St Lu­cian con­tin­gent in Paris when Julien Al­fred won the women’s 100m gold medal, he must have qui­et­ly said to him­self that it should have been a "Tri­ni" woman. 

I am hop­ing I am com­plete­ly wrong and both Ato and Hase­ly have been reached out to and they gave their opin­ions, but my ex­pe­ri­ence has shown me that when or­gan­i­sa­tions have been crit­i­cised, even con­struc­tive­ly, the or­gan­i­sa­tion turns their back on those in­di­vid­u­als as they are seen as trou­ble mak­ers. How un­for­tu­nate!

I un­der­stand that mon­ey is no prob­lem and the ath­letes, es­pe­cial­ly the elite ones, have been giv­en con­sid­er­able help fi­nan­cial­ly. So if mon­ey is no prob­lem, then we have to ask if the funds were prop­er­ly utilised. Mon­ey is splashed around like con­fet­ti but where does it re­al­ly land? Who en­sured where the funds were go­ing? Did the body or in­di­vid­u­als have to give a break­down of why the funds were be­ing used for A and not for B?

This coun­try con­tin­ues to boast about how T&T ath­letes en­joy the most fund­ing and when it comes to that, no oth­er Caribbean coun­try can match T&T but you read sto­ries about ath­letes not prop­er­ly tak­en care of af­ter they get in­jured, etc. So, some­where along the line, we are not get­ting the whole truth. In ad­di­tion, who is in­ves­ti­gat­ing these so-called “sto­ries” from ath­letes that they are not be­ing looked af­ter prop­er­ly? If not, the pow­ers that be have to be held ac­count­able, or the pow­ers that be have to come out and de­fend their po­si­tion; as they say, call a spade a spade. The ques­tions are many, but the an­swers are few.

In­deed, it’s time for a cold, hard look in the mir­ror, to look in­to what hap­pened to T&T’s con­tin­gent in Paris and have a mean­ing­ful post-mortem that would be based on facts and prop­er da­ta. I, like many of you, am ex­haust­ed by these mean­ing­less post-mortems where every­one has their say, and we then get a won­der­ful­ly word­ed press re­lease about the ac­tion plans, and then noth­ing hap­pens. Be­cause in three months, we for­get about it un­til the next Olympics comes around. No more emp­ty promis­es. We need a foren­sic ex­am­i­na­tion of T&T’s Olympic pro­gramme, from grass­roots to elite lev­el. We need to lis­ten to our leg­ends, like Hase­ly Craw­ford and Ato Boldon. Most im­por­tant­ly, we need to hold those re­spon­si­ble ac­count­able. As Ato says, the peo­ple in charge have done noth­ing, and we all say prayers and hope, like crime, for di­vine in­ter­ven­tion. Let’s all then keep pray­ing! 

The Olympics are more than just medals. They are a re­flec­tion of a na­tion's spir­it, its am­bi­tion, and its ca­pac­i­ty for ex­cel­lence on the glob­al stage. Right now, that re­flec­tion is a bit blur­ry. Let's sharp­en the im­age. This is about pride, about po­ten­tial, and about a na­tion's re­solve to rise again. Can T&T re­claim its Olympic glo­ry? On­ly time will tell. But one thing re­mains cer­tain: busi­ness as usu­al is no longer an op­tion.

Ed­i­tor’s note: The views ex­pressed in the pre­ced­ing ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion in which he is a stake­hold­er.