Keston Bledman, Marc Burns, Emmanuel Callender, Richard Thompson and Aaron Armstrong are role models and positive examples for the youth of Trinidad and Tobago. It is time to end the ongoing efforts to diminish their Team TTO 4x100 metres men’s Beijing 2008 Olympic gold medal.
This is not about monetary rewards. This is about respect. This is about the contribution they can make to their country, society, and sport. If any sports leader or decision-maker is having difficulty understanding the difference, then they are part of the problem. They have “cocoa in de sun,” and they “eat and wipe mouth like fowl.”
All T&T Olympic gold medal winners are ambassadors.
On July 5, 2022, the athletes received their gold medals in an Olympic medal reallocation ceremony at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland. It was historic on two counts: it was T&T’s first-ever Olympic relay gold medal, and it was the first time the pan version of the national anthem was heard at an Olympic podium ceremony.
The Team TTO 4x100m men’s relay team originally won silver and were reallocated the gold medal due to a failed drug test by a member of the winning Jamaican team. They did it clean and the right way. They worked hard and fought like hell to represent Team TTO with pride, dignity, and dedication. I have heard comments that I consider petty jealousy. I will not give those utterances dignity, relevance, or validity by repeating them.
Their being vocal about matters important to them should not incur disrespect, spite, or vindictiveness. They are fully within their rights to hold an opinion and to express it.
Continuing to spend energy, time, and effort to diminish and erase their achievement is not just an attack on them; it is an attack on the very dream and aspiration of winning an Olympic gold medal.
T&T is currently listed in the International Olympic Committee (IOC) records as having three Olympic gold medals. Three! Not one! Not two! Three!
Stop trying to rewrite history and reduce it to two Olympic gold medals.
The other topic I want to address has serious implications for global sport.
Modern-day slavery persists in subtle and not-so-subtle iterations within global athletics, and not enough has been done to protect sportsmen and sportswomen from exploitation and trafficking in its various forms. Human trafficking can involve forced labour, sexual exploitation, imposed criminality, and other forms of abuse.
August 23 is the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition, designated by UNESCO to honour the victims of the transatlantic slave trade and commemorate the 1791 Haitian Revolution uprising. The day also encourages us to examine why forced labour and human trafficking continue today.
Max Wexler, in an August 17, 2026 article on www.notforsale.org, wrote: “The most useful connection between the history of slavery and contemporary human trafficking does not come from claiming that the two systems are identical. It comes from understanding how exploitation can become profitable when economic structures allow the costs to be borne almost entirely by those with the least power to refuse. Human beings were converted into economic assets whose labour could generate profit across industries and continents.”
Global sports leaders need to make a sincere effort to understand the historical, systemic, institutional, and cultural antecedents that underpin global and Olympic sport–and to recognise how global sport continues to enable iterations of modern-day slavery.
