Fans of the coun­try's sports­men and women can ex­pect to have a clos­er re­la­tion­ship with their he­roes in the build-up to next year's Olympic Games in Rio, with the sign­ing of an agree­ment be­tween the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) and The Fan Club, re­tail­er of au­then­tic ap­par­el and brand­ed sou­venir gift items.

The agree­ment, signed last week, will al­low for The Fan Club to mar­ket, dis­trib­ute and sell T&T Olympic-brand­ed mer­chan­dise at its three lo­ca­tions in Movi­eTowne, Trinci­ty Mall and Gulf City Mall.

Fans can ex­pect brand­ed T-shirts, po­los, shorts, wa­ter bot­tles, cof­fee mugs, key chains, pins, jack­ets and track out­fits.

TTOC pres­i­dent Bri­an Lewis de­scribed the ini­tia­tive as an­oth­er pos­i­tive sign for his or­gan­i­sa­tion, not­ing that not on­ly will the con­stituen­cy of Olympic fans be brought clos­er to their he­roes, but it demon­strat­ed the TTOC's com­mit­ment to find­ing ways to in­crease its rev­enue earn­ing ca­pac­i­ty.

Lewis said that it was no se­cret that T&T fans were pas­sion­ate, and want­ed to iden­ti­fy with the ath­letes who rep­re­sent­ed them on the big stage.

"Fans have been ask­ing about this ini­tia­tive for some­time, and we have fi­nal­ly found a part­ner whom we be­lieve can ex­e­cute this process in a mean­ing­ful way.

"We know The Fan Club is a place where au­then­tic fan ap­par­el and gift items can be found. And we have no doubt that this re­la­tion­ship will bear fruit."

Di­rec­tor of The Fan Club, Mikhail Singh, not­ed that the store al­ready had a re­la­tion­ship with the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion, and was as­so­ci­at­ed with the sales of Red Steel jer­seys for the Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) ear­li­er this year.

"The TTOC is our sig­na­ture sport­ing body in Trinidad and To­ba­go and we are very pleased to be as­so­ci­at­ed with this project. We are hop­ing that fans can start get­ting their Olympic mer­chan­dise and brand­ed items by No­vem­ber."