Rachael Thom­spon-King

Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ic Ad­min­is­tra­tions (NAAA) pres­i­dent Ephraim Ser­rette be­lieves bet­ter sys­tems must be put in place for lo­cal ath­letes to make a mark on the world stage.

He made the com­ment yes­ter­day as he said he was dis­ap­point­ed with the re­sult of the per­for­mances of the ma­jor­i­ty of Team T&T at the just con­clud­ed Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

De­spite hav­ing the largest con­tin­gent of Olympic ath­letes ever, many of whom were from the track and field dis­ci­pline, on­ly javelin throw­er Keshorn Wal­cott got on the podi­um with a bronze per­for­mance.

The over­all team's ef­fort has been much ma­ligned by some quar­ters of so­ci­ety, with many tak­ing to so­cial me­dia to vent their frus­tra­tion at the oth­er ath­letes' in­abil­i­ty to bring home more medals.

Yes­ter­day, Ser­rette ad­mit­ted much was ex­pect­ed of the team.

"Ex­pec­ta­tions were high when you com­pare how much medals T&T won in Bei­jing and back in 2012 in Lon­don," he said.

"Track and field gets most of the pres­sure be­cause it is the one sport that has been bring­ing medals, so it is ex­pect­ed that peo­ple were hop­ing for more suc­cess. But prop­er sys­tems need to be im­ple­ment­ed if we are to com­pete against world class ath­letes."

Af­ter win­ning one gold, one sil­ver and a bronze medal in Lon­don, there was hope of more suc­cess in Rio in ath­let­ics. This time around though the high­ly favoured sprint­ers Richard Thomp­son and Ke­ston Bled­man, both for­mer Olympic medal­lists, and Ron­del Sor­ril­lo failed to ad­vance out of the in­di­vid­ual semi­fi­nal heats in the men's 100 me­tres event. They were joined by Em­manuel Cal­len­der for the 4x100m re­lay but the team was dis­qual­i­fied.

"Peo­ple seem to have for­got­ten that the 4x100m men fin­ished fourth in Lon­don, but won a bronze be­cause a team (Cana­da) was dis­qual­i­fied and then the Amer­i­can dop­ing is­sue saw them up­grad­ed to sil­ver," Ser­rette said.

The men's 4x400m re­lay team of Jar­rin Solomon, Lalonde Gor­don, De­on Lendore and Machel Ce­de­nio suf­fered a sim­i­lar fate, as they were dis­qual­i­fied in their semi­fi­nal heat af­ter fin­ish­ing third. It was lat­er learned that it was due to a lane vi­o­la­tion.

Ce­de­nio did well in mak­ing it to the fi­nal, clock­ing 44.01 to break the pre­vi­ous na­tion­al record held by Ian Mor­ris for the past 24 years, but placed fourth. Sprint­er Michelle-Lee Ahye took some of the spot­light by reach­ing both the women's 100m and 200m fi­nals.

"Let's put things in­to con­text, both Ahye and Ce­de­nio have done much bet­ter than last year in their times. Ahye made two fi­nals, plac­ing sixth, and Ce­de­nio broke the na­tion­al record, fin­ish­ing be­hind sea­son com­peti­tors who have all ran 43 sec­onds."

If T&T wants suc­cess, prepa­ra­tion for the Tokyo Olympics must start now, he added.

"The de­vel­op­ment of T&T ath­letes must be­gin now for Tokyo 2020, not in 2019," said Ser­rette.

"Japan is host­ing and they are mak­ing sure that their ath­letes are at their best when that time comes around. A com­bi­na­tion of things need to hap­pen, which in­clude the ath­letes and coach­es for us to be at a bet­ter stage at the next Olympics."

He said lo­cal fans must al­so not com­pare T&T to Ja­maica, since that coun­try has a far bet­ter pro­gramme which feeds its teams.

"Peo­ple like to com­pare us to Ja­maica, but Ja­maica has a great pro­gramme, as well as the British sys­tem. Look at GC Fos­ter Col­lege in Ja­maica that has home-grown, home-trained Ja­maican ath­letes that can com­pete with the world's best.

"Our ju­nior sys­tem is not tran­si­tion­ing well to se­nior lev­el. We have ba­si­cal­ly the same group of re­lay run­ners from 2008, so clear­ly some of them can­not fol­low through and make a suc­cess­ful tran­si­tion."

From here on out, Ser­rette said, per­for­mances at the Games should be analysed and mov­ing for­ward the as­so­ci­a­tion is call­ing on every­one to get in­volved.

"I'm speak­ing over­all now. All sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions, the Gov­ern­ment and TTOC (T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee), we need to de­vel­op a sys­tem to chart a path to 2020.

"To be podi­um ready, we need to form a track and field na­tion­al pro­gramme."