Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has heaped praise on her for­mer par­lia­men­tary col­league and for­mer Min­is­ter of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Sham­fa Cud­joe-Lewis, for her role in main­tain­ing and ad­min­is­ter­ing the Elite Ath­letes As­sis­tance Pro­gramme (EAAP).

Beck­les was speak­ing out­side of par­lia­ment yes­ter­day when she was asked to com­ment on T&T's World Ath­let­ics Cham­pi­onship medal-win­ning duo, Keshorn Wal­cott and Jereem Richards.

On Thurs­day, Richards streaked to sil­ver in the men's 400 me­tres, set­ting a new na­tion­al record of 43.72 sec­onds. It was the Point Fortin-born ath­lete's first in­di­vid­ual glob­al medal of any kind since win­ning bronze in the 200 me­tre sprint at the 2017 World Cham­pi­onships in Lon­don.

Wal­cott's gold in the men's javelin at the Cham­pi­onships in Tokyo, Japan, af­ter a best throw of 88.16m, al­so com­plet­ed a re­demp­tion arc for the To­co, Trinidad na­tive.

An Olympic gold medal­list in Lon­don 2012 and a bronze medal­list in Rio 2016, he could on­ly man­age sev­enth at the 2024 Paris Games be­fore Thurs­day's tri­umph.

Beck­les em­pha­sised the sig­nif­i­cance of gov­ern­ment sup­port for elite ath­letes.

She said, "At the time of Min­is­ter Sham­fa Cud­joe, the elite ath­lete pro­gramme pro­vid­ed vi­tal as­sis­tance, in­clud­ing sup­port for Keshorn Wal­cott. On be­half of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment, I con­grat­u­late Keshorn and recog­nise the de­ci­sive work done by Sham­fa Cud­joe in de­vel­op­ing the pro­gramme."

Beck­les was re­fer­ring to a cheque dis­trib­uted to Wal­cott on Au­gust 12, 2024, af­ter his par­tic­i­pa­tion in Paris, which drew sig­nif­i­cant pub­lic back­lash, with many voic­ing their opin­ion that the for­mer Olympic cham­pi­on was un­de­serv­ing of the fund­ing fol­low­ing his per­for­mance in Paris.

How­ev­er, yes­ter­day Beck­les praised Wal­cott for his abil­i­ty to block out those who ques­tioned his wor­thi­ness to re­ceive EAAP fund­ing and for bounc­ing back from the dis­ap­point­ment of plac­ing sev­enth at the Olympics, say­ing: "Be­cause if you re­call at the time, he wasn't do­ing all that well. So we want to cel­e­brate his per­se­ver­ance, cel­e­brate his re­silience. I just want to re­mem­ber the vil­lage of To­co and re­mem­ber the North Coast ar­eas that cel­e­brate him, and re­mem­ber a lot of ath­letes who come from rur­al ar­eas.

"Some­times we be­lieve that you have to have all the re­sources when you're in sport, but some­times it's your raw tal­ent, some­times it's as­sis­tance from the gov­ern­ment, or the love of your com­mu­ni­ty. I want to say con­grat­u­la­tions to Keshorn and con­grat­u­la­tions to Jereem and to the peo­ple of T&T, let's re­al­ly cel­e­brate them."

In a Face­book post yes­ter­day, Cud­joe-Lewis al­so com­mend­ed both ath­letes.

"The day you plant the seed is not the day you eat the fruit,” Cud­joe-Lewis' post stat­ed.

She added, "I stand with the peo­ple of our proud na­tion, hum­bled by your un­wa­ver­ing com­mit­ment and pleased to have ex­tend­ed as­sis­tance and sup­port through the years. Dur­ing our tenure, our Gov­ern­ment ex­tend­ed the Elite Ath­lete As­sis­tance Pro­gramme to pro­vide fi­nan­cial sup­port to our ath­letes, and in 2017, we es­tab­lished the Na­tion­al Re­wards and In­cen­tives Pol­i­cy frame­work to re­ward ath­letes for medals earned on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage. To this end, a gold medal win­ner at the World Ath­let­ics Cham­pi­onships is en­ti­tled to a re­ward of $500,000, and a sil­ver medal win­ner is en­ti­tled to $250,000. I cel­e­brate this mo­ment with our star ath­letes, and I salute all ath­letes who con­tin­ue to strive for ex­cel­lence in ho­n­our of the red, white, and black."

When asked about re­wards for Tokyo ac­com­plish­ments, Beck­les said, "We need to main­tain high-qual­i­ty sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties, con­tin­ue the elite pro­gramme, and have pa­tience. Even top ath­letes may ex­pe­ri­ence ups and downs, but their tal­ent pre­vails. I await the gov­ern­ment's de­ci­sion on their re­wards."