hugh hen­der­son

I have read many sports books in the last 60 years but am hard pressed to re­mem­ber one for which I had so much ad­mi­ra­tion and re­spect as I do "Olympian-75 years of Trinidad and To­ba­go in Olympic Sport 1934-2010" au­thored by in­ter­na­tion­al­ly-suc­cess­ful ath­lete, Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor and pre­vi­ous high pro­file T&T politi­cian/diplo­mat, Dr Basil Ince. Dr Ince could have ti­tled his mag­num opus "Ever­est" be­cause the 58 ath­letes he pro­filed scaled great per­son­al heights in their ca­reers, and maybe mod­esty pre­vent­ed him from call­ing it "Labour of Love" since he start­ed writ­ing in 1988 and up­dat­ed con­tin­u­al­ly to 2010. "Olympian" is an epic cat­a­logue of over 300 pages cap­tur­ing mas­sive amounts of his­tor­i­cal in­for­ma­tion pre­vi­ous­ly un­known, writ­ten in user-friend­ly lan­guage and sen­si­tive­ly ad­dressed to sport­ing au­di­ences of all age groups. For­tu­nate­ly, the first ath­lete pro­filed in Olympian, weight lifter Rod­ney Wilkes who won the na­tion's first Olympic medal in 1948, is still alive and must rev­el in the mem­o­ry of be­ing re­ferred to as "a pock­et-sized edi­tion of Sam­son."

Olympian em­braces nine sec­tions cov­er­ing Build­ing the Foun­da­tion, The Iron Pumpers, Track­sters, Jumpers, Throw­ers and Walk­ers, The Ped­al Push­ers, Swim­mers and Yachts­men, The Shoot­ers, The Sweet Sci­en­tists, Taek­wan­do and Team Sports, so there is fas­ci­nat­ing ma­te­r­i­al for all ath­let­ic tastes. Each in­di­vid­ual is giv­en gen­er­ous cov­er­age and ex­tra­or­di­nary at­ten­tion is paid to their per­son­al opin­ions and out­stand­ing mem­o­ries, both re­ward­ing and dis­ap­point­ing, which makes for "can't put down the book" read­ing. While many sports fans may choose to start read­ing about Hase­ly Craw­ford, Ato Boldon, George Bovell, Richard Thomp­son and oth­er mod­ern cham­pi­ons, the dai­ly news­pa­pers should run a se­ries on the chap­ter Build­ing the Foun­da­tion which is a "must read" for every cit­i­zen to un­der­stand and ap­pre­ci­ate where we came from and what we owe to the pi­o­neers such as Rod­ney Wilkes, Man­nie Ramjohn, Wil­fred Tull, Comp­ton Gon­salves, George Lewis, Sybil Don­martin, JRN Cum­ber­batch, Bertie Thomp­son, Ahamad Charles, Hyl­ton 'Bar­racu­da' Mitchell-talk about set­ting a path for progress! I was per­son­al­ly thrilled to see Ahamad Charles (cy­cling and foot­ball) men­tioned, as he was my first ever boss at Tex­a­co in 1961 and was a neigh­bour in La Car­riere Roard, Pointe a Pierre.

As a teenag­er at South­ern Games, I thrilled to the vic­to­ries of cy­clists "Bar­racu­da" Mitchell and "Iron Man" Belille and lat­er Roger Gib­bon and Leslie King-all af­fec­tion­ate­ly and grate­ful­ly re­mem­bered in Olympian. I once ran a 100 yards race against great sprint­er Mike Agos­ti­ni (Chap­ter 11) at a school Sports day when he was a spe­cial guest and I fin­ished a pant­i­ng fourth an es­ti­mat­ed 87 yards be­hind Mike. On that oc­ca­sion sports com­men­ta­tor Ken Laugh­lin called me "the bare­foot run­ner" as all oth­ers wore ex­pen­sive run­ning shoes! Olympian will bring back sim­i­lar per­son­al mem­o­ries to all read­ers. Per­haps the sen­tence I re­mem­ber best when com­par­ing the past to the present, came from the chap­ter on weight lifter Lennox Kil­go­ur when he was asked about the great­est per­son­al dis­ap­point­ment in his ca­reer. This read: "...but with Kil­go­ur it was the poor re­cep­tion he re­ceived af­ter re­turn­ing with Wilkes from Helsin­ki. It was in­com­pre­hen­si­ble to him that a team of two should re­turn with two medals from the Olympics and no of­fi­cial be there to greet them. In Kil­go­ur's words: "There was no-one, nei­ther from Gov­ern­ment, the Olympic Com­mit­tee, no sports team, no-one at all to meet us to say 'well done'".

That was in 1952 and to­day if you want to be a well-wish­er to greet a vic­to­ri­ous team at Pi­ar­co, you al­most have to have let­ters of rec­om­men­da­tion from the Pope, Queen and Pres­i­dent Oba­ma to get with­in a mile of the VIP room. How times change! Chap­ter 12 is my favourite chap­ter as it is a mi­ni au­to­bi­og­ra­phy by the au­thor Dr Basil Ince, writ­ten with such hu­mil­i­ty and lack of self-praise while still cap­tur­ing his won­der­ful achieve­ments in ed­u­ca­tion, ath­let­ics, pol­i­tics, per­son­al and fam­i­ly life. I have nev­er had the plea­sure of meet­ing Dr Ince but hope to do so soon to learn more from and en­joy the com­pa­ny of "the man be­hind the book" whose life ex­pe­ri­ence is so vast, ver­sa­tile and ex­cit­ing. In sum­ma­ry, I wish I could have made ref­er­ence to each of the ath­letes who made us proud over the years and whose names have again sprung to the fore­front thanks to Dr Ince's mag­nif­i­cent ef­fort to cap­ture our Olympic, Com­mon­wealth Games and Pan Am Games his­to­ry in such bril­liant and in­for­ma­tive fash­ion.

Olympian gets full marks un­der the head­ings (a) his­tor­i­cal in­ter­est; (b) at­trac­tive pre­sen­ta­tion; (c) ex­cel­lent use of the Eng­lish lan­guage; (d) in­ter­est­ing and sen­si­tive per­son­al anec­dotes; (e) de­tailed and fac­tu­al per­son­al pro­files; (f) well-se­lect­ed pho­tographs, (g) su­perb edit­ing and (h) spe­cif­ic sec­tions pro­vid­ing ed­u­ca­tion­al back­ground and use­ful hints on dif­fer­ent as­pects on be­com­ing/be­ing a top class ath­lete or coach. It was a priv­i­lege to read Olympian and of­fer my thoughts to the sport­ing pub­lic. The hon­est truth is that when I first felt the weight of the book, I thought "oh no!" but as I read on, I be­gan to wish it was twice as heavy, so much did I en­joy the con­tent. I con­grat­u­late Dr Ince on be­half of all read­ers; wish him well with the sale of Olympian and en­cour­age every sports lover in T&T to rush to the stores and pur­chase a copy for some­one's up­com­ing birth­day or an­niver­sary.

How about giv­ing a copy to a vis­i­tor from "for­eign" who is here for Car­ni­val or do­nat­ing one to a school in your com­mu­ni­ty? "Olympian" is a book the qual­i­ty and rel­e­vance of which we sel­dom ex­pe­ri­ence.

Great, won­der­ful, fan­tas­tic and ex­tra­or­di­nary-Olympian makes me proud to be a Tri­ni!