Lies that con­firm peo­ple’s prej­u­dices are easy and con­ve­nient rather than com­plex truths. Mir­rors of truth need­ed in lo­cal sport. Keshorn Wal­cott and Jereem Richards are let­ting their suc­cess­es speak for them­selves. Every­one is some­one’s role mod­el, be it good or bad.

Yes­ter­day, both Wal­cott and Richards were wel­comed back from Tokyo, Japan, as re­turn­ing he­roes. A wel­come they de­serve. The joy of T&T - once again- blurred all bar­ri­ers - race, gen­der, re­li­gion, class.

In his book “Man’s Search for Mean­ing”, Vik­tor Fran­kl made the point that man(kind) was most tempt­ed to dis­tract him­self with plea­sure when his life was void of mean­ing. The suc­cess of our sports­men and women bol­sters the as­pi­ra­tional iden­ti­ty of T&T. Their suc­cess fos­ters en­gage­ment and con­nec­tion. To­mor­row is Re­pub­lic Day and we are hap­py. Hail Keshorn and Jereem. They achieved on the glob­al stage. To place their feat in ad­di­tion­al con­text, let’s sum­marise some facts: Source - World Ath­let­ics.

A record num­ber of na­tions won medals at the World Ath­let­ics Cham­pi­onships Tokyo 25.

A to­tal of 53 na­tions made it on­to the medal ta­ble af­ter nine days of com­pe­ti­tion at the 20th run­ning of the World Cham­pi­onships. The pre­vi­ous record of 46 was set at Os­a­ka 2007 and equalled at Bu­dapest 2023.

Some 1,992 ath­letes took part from 193 dif­fer­ent coun­tries and the Ath­lete Refugee Team (1,034 male and 958 fe­male ath­letes).

The cham­pi­onships achieved record reach as the most wide­ly cov­ered World Cham­pi­onships in his­to­ry.

World Ath­let­ics pres­i­dent Se­bas­t­ian Coe said, “Tokyo has set the stage for some of our sport’s most ex­tra­or­di­nary per­for­mances. This has been a cham­pi­onship for the ages and we are pro­found­ly grate­ful to the peo­ple of Japan for host­ing our show­case cham­pi­onships for the third time.”

How­ev­er, in the midst of the joy and adu­la­tion came Ato Boldon’s de­c­la­ra­tion of truth. Boldon gave a scathing as­sess­ment of the state of track and field in T&T, de­clar­ing he has “nev­er seen it this bad” and lay­ing the blame square­ly at the feet of the sport’s gov­ern­ing body. He made his com­ments dur­ing an iS­ports Sat­ur­day pro­gramme with An­dre Er­rol Bap­tiste on i95.5FM.

While there are those who will say that Ato is “out­ta tim­ing” and he ought not to take the sheen off the na­tion’s cel­e­bra­tion. Oth­ers say, “If not now, when?”Ato is not now say­ing what he said for the first time.

Keshorn and Jereem shone bright on the glob­al stage. But are there oth­er medals that we could have had and ath­letes who may have qual­i­fied for Tokyo 2025 but didn’t?

It’s not if you like Ato or not; it’s re­al­ly about mak­ing the choice to ei­ther kill the mes­sen­ger or have a re­al and hon­est con­ver­sa­tion.

In clos­ing, let’s draw at­ten­tion to an ex­am­ple of the high­est ideals of sport that oc­curred at the very same World Cham­pi­onship in Tokyo.

In­ter­na­tion­al me­dia de­scribed it as a beau­ti­ful and touch­ing mo­ment of hu­man­i­ty and sports val­ues be­tween high jumpers Eleanor Pat­ter­son (Aus­tralia) and An­geli­na Top­ić (Ser­bia).

Pat­ter­son and Top­ic shel­tered to­geth­er un­der an um­brel­la while the sec­ond rain de­lay took place, Top­ic was emo­tion­al as she wait­ed for the re­sults, but was com­fort­ed by the Aus­tralian. Space con­straints don’t al­low a full retelling. Google the pho­to and the sto­ry.