Sport Min­is­ter Anil Roberts yes­ter­day de­scribed for­mer Olympian Bran­don Bai­ley as per­haps the finest weightlifter in the heavy­weight class that Trinidad and To­ba­go has ever pro­duced.

Bai­ley died on Wednes­day at the age of 80, af­ter ail­ing for some time.

Bai­ley rep­re­sent­ed T&T at na­tion­al, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al lev­els with a great deal of suc­cess, es­pe­cial­ly in the 1960s where he cap­tured two bronze at the Com­mon­wealth Games (1962, 1966), gold at the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean Games (1962) as well as sil­ver and bronze at the Pan Amer­i­can Games (1963, 1967). Bai­ley's sole Olympic per­for­mance came in Tokyo 1964 when he placed 20th in his weight cat­e­go­ry.

Bai­ley was born on No­vem­ber 5, 1932 in St James and at age sev­en, he moved to Ari­ma. He at­tend­ed East­ern Boys Pri­ma­ry School and the Ari­ma RC School. He had an in­ter­est in many sports in­clud­ing foot­ball, box­ing, run­ning and crick­et. How­ev­er, his re­al pas­sion was in weightlift­ing. His in­spi­ra­tion came from his friends. In 1956, he joined the 'Sandow Bar­bell Club'. It was at this point that he made a tran­si­tion in his life from body build­ing to weightlift­ing.

He first rep­re­sent­ed T&T at the West In­di­an Cham­pi­onships in 1958.

In 1962, he won a bronze medal at the British Em­pire and Com­mon­wealth Games in Perth, Aus­tralia. He gained mo­ti­va­tion by the words of in­spi­ra­tion from his friend­ly team mate, Lennox Kil­go­ur. Bai­ley pressed 340 pounds, snatched 280 pounds and jerked 350 pounds yield­ing a to­tal of 970 pounds plac­ing him at 3rd spot. In 1963, Bran­don en­tered the Pan Amer­i­can Games at Sao Paulo, Brazil where he was able to in­crease his to­tal by 3.5 pounds earn­ing him a sil­ver medal. Ad­di­tion­al­ly he moved on to the 1966 Com­mon­wealth Games in Kingston, Ja­maica and earned a bronze medal for a sec­ond time. That same year, he earned gold at the CAC Games in Puer­to Ri­co. In 1967, he re­vis­it­ed the Pan Amer­i­can Games that were be­ing held at Win­nipeg, Cana­da. There, he placed third and was ranked 5th in the world in heavy­weight class di­vi­sion. He com­pet­ed in the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo in which he placed 20th with 150kgs in clean & jerk, 120kgs in snatch and 155kgs in mil­i­tary press, to­talling 425kgs.

Bai­ley was in­duct­ed in­to the WIT­CO Sports Hall of Fame in 1985. His com­plete bi­og­ra­phy is de­tailed on the Sport Archives of T&T at http://www.sportarchivestt.com/ath­letes/bran­don-bai­ley/

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