An­dre Bap­tise

The Com­mon­wealth Games in Glas­gow, Scot­land, is over but the re­sult­ing eight medals, while much ap­pre­ci­at­ed, should not be the on­ly area of in­tro­spec­tion for those in­ter­est­ed in pro­gress­ing our sport.

It is ob­vi­ous, that the T&T con­tin­gent could have done bet­ter and achieved more medals, if George Bovell III had pro­duced a medal as ex­pect­ed. He and his team will have to ex­am­ine his fu­ture in light of the fact, that with­out any Eu­ro­pean swim­mers or Amer­i­can swim­mers, he was on­ly able to achieve fifth place in his pre­ferred fi­nal, and there­fore se­ri­ous doubts must be raised on his cred­i­ble chances in 2016 in Brazil.

Per­haps though, this is where we need to start, with ques­tions be­ing raised to the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC), on both the se­lec­tion process go­ing for­ward for in­ter­na­tion­al events, and al­so team guide­lines be­fore any ma­jor event.

There must ex­ist rules of par­tic­i­pa­tion, rules of el­i­gi­bil­i­ty and gen­er­al­ly guid­ance rules for events which must be ad­hered to, oth­er­wise, there will be an­ar­chy and prob­lems.

Bovell qual­i­fied for the 100 me­tres back­stroke fi­nal, af­ter en­ter­ing the event of his own free will, but while he had the sev­enth fastest time head­ing in­to the fi­nal and did not look like he would medal, he opt­ed to not swim the fi­nal.

Clear­ly it was not in­jury, as he swam the fol­low­ing day in his pet event the 50m freestyle and it was re­port­ed that his de­ci­sion was based on him, want­i­ng to not ex­ert him­self and be at his best for the 50m freestyle. It was a re­port that he and his team nev­er re­fut­ed.

My prob­lem is that, how can some­one qual­i­fy for a fi­nal at a ma­jor meet­ing and drop out and the gov­ern­ing body, the TTOC has no say or no opin­ion. So is it that they are afraid of Bovell? And if so, that is ab­solute rub­bish and speaks vol­umes on their man­age­ment style.

Please do not tell me al­so that this has been done be­fore by him and there­fore it is ac­cept­able, if that be the case, then every team mem­ber can be­have sim­i­lar­ly, wake up one morn­ing and de­cide not to race or swim or play a fi­nal be­cause they do not want to, and we all must ac­cept it grace­ful­ly with a big broad smile and move on. Who paid for their train­ing? Who paid for their sup­port? Who en­sured that the Olympic body would spon­sor their Games? In par­tic­u­lar, Bovell is ob­tain­ing elite fund­ing from this coun­try and this is not mon­ey to be eas­i­ly ig­nored, as it is es­ti­mat­ed at around $250,000 a year at least.

But it is the prin­ci­ple of the mat­ter and the way, it was done, with cal­lous dis­re­gard for the peo­ple of T&T, who were all hap­py to watch one of our own in a first fi­nal, it meant a lot. It was not sur­pris­ing to lis­ten to some of the dis­may­ing com­ments from the pub­lic on Bovell's er­rant choice, as it was one of dis­gust, dis­sat­is­fac­tion and left a sour taste. In fact, sad­ly, the pop­u­la­tion turned against him, but he has him­self to blame for this.

As for the TTOC, they need to put their house in or­der in en­sur­ing that the in­for­ma­tion from the camp is re­layed prop­er­ly. There is an ur­gent need for the TTOC to hire a work­ing pro­fes­sion­al press of­fi­cer or Press at­tache, sim­i­lar to how it works all over the world. In the past, Bri­an Lewis used to do this job him­self tire­less­ly but now that he is pres­i­dent and the Olympic frame­work is grow­ing, a work­ing full-time jour­nal­ist should be hired.

This would en­hance the TTOC's im­age and en­sure that all the me­dia hous­es in this coun­try could di­rect their en­quiries to one con­stant re­li­able source. While there may be some that would be up­set with this, the TTOC needs to stand alone and be de­ci­sive. New lead­er­ship may not al­ways mean a change in di­rec­tion but as we as a sport­ing world evolve, the price for lack of time­ly in­for­ma­tion is fail­ure and abuse.

Lewis needs to im­me­di­ate­ly hire a press of­fi­cer, so that our Olympic and re­lat­ed teams in the fu­ture can have their views aired prop­er­ly. This sort of me­dia cov­er­age would not on­ly as­sist our ath­letes in get­ting their opin­ions out on one plat­form but would en­sure con­sis­ten­cy and trust.

Who knows if this ex­ist­ed, then Bovell would not have re­ceived the amount of abuse he has had to since his with­draw­al from the swim­ming fi­nal. Maybe any­way?

How­ev­er, it is clear, that pol­i­cy needs to be es­tab­lished with set guide­lines on en­ter­ing and par­tic­i­pat­ing in events, this is not on­ly about the ath­letes pride in fin­ish­ing un­placed in a fi­nal, but it must be about the coun­try and the need to en­sure that our name is not tar­nished as quit­ters or cow­ards who do not like to lose or be de­feat­ed.

As to the se­lec­tion pol­i­cy, ques­tions con­tin­ue to be asked about the idea to use a slow Zwede He­witt (split of 45.9) to run the an­chor leg in the 4x400m re­lay team which won a bronze medal when gold seemed theirs for the tak­ing.

Of con­cern will al­so be the num­ber of in­juries we con­tin­ue to suf­fer be­fore events, even though the ath­letes are sup­posed to have been test­ed be­fore and their fit­ness as­sured this how­ev­er is not the case. And the sad part is that this is not the first time we have wit­nessed this.

There are sev­er­al young jour­nal­ists, who would be in­ter­est­ed in this job, and with the Olympics in 2016 a mere two years away, the TTOC must act now in or­der to be ready to de­liv­er. This would be a great sign of pro­gres­sive­ness and es­tab­lish the TTOC as an or­gan­i­sa­tion well ahead of the oth­ers.

So let us hope the lessons from the Com­mon­wealth Games will not on­ly be from the field of play but al­so from the of­fices and those in­volved in ad­min­is­tra­tion of the sports that the need for prop­er and trust­wor­thy com­mu­ni­ca­tion must be first and fore­most in the minds of those that want sports to suc­ceed in this coun­try.