There has been much hand-wring­ing and to some ex­tent, Mon­day morn­ing quar­ter­back­ing about the lack of an Olympic medal from our ath­letes at the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Tokyo games.

For the first time in 25 years, T&T has come back with­out any­thing to show. This is no doubt a re­gres­sion in terms of our coun­try’s re­cent per­for­mances at the Olympics, but if we are hon­est and if we looked at the da­ta, the out­come, while dis­ap­point­ing, was per­haps not un­ex­pect­ed.

Let me be clear, I am sure our ath­letes gave it their all. They left noth­ing on the track or the field, in the wa­ter or the ring, or on the cy­cling track. For their ef­fort, com­mit­ment to coun­try, hard work and nev­er say die at­ti­tude, we must salute them.

We must, how­ev­er, see this as a chas­ten­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. We must look at the da­ta that shows us these ath­letes’ per­for­mances over the last year, com­pared to what oth­ers in their events were do­ing, and re­alise that it should have pre­pared us for the even­tu­al out­come.

It was un­for­tu­nate that there was an in­jury in the 4x400 me­tres men’s re­lay and the dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion of cy­clist Nicholas Paul but, that aside, it was al­ways go­ing to be very dif­fi­cult if not un­like­ly that our ath­letes were go­ing to bring home medals.

The per­for­mance of the ath­letes should al­so tell us that we need to re­ly on da­ta to guide our de­ci­sions and to tem­per our ex­pec­ta­tions.

Had we done so, we would not have ex­pect­ed to medal in the 400 me­tres men or the women’s 100 me­tres. It is just where the ath­letes are at this time in their ca­reers, whether their per­for­mances were im­pact­ed by in­jury or form does not mat­ter. The da­ta does not lie.

Sim­i­lar­ly, the da­ta on the T&T econ­o­my tells us a clear sto­ry of an econ­o­my in trou­ble pre-COVID-19 and which has been ham­mered since.

Since 2015, when the then Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment pumped huge sums in­to the econ­o­my in an ef­fort to stay in pow­er, it has de­clined for every year that da­ta has been avail­able with the ex­cep­tion of 2018, when the growth in GDP was a mere 0.1 per cent.

In fact, the coun­try’s econ­o­my is sig­nif­i­cant­ly small­er than it was six years ago and the lack of time­ly da­ta has left us in a po­si­tion where we can on­ly guessti­mate the ex­tent of the de­cline and dis­lo­ca­tion that has tak­en place in the last 16 months, where mea­sures to bat­tle the pan­dem­ic were im­ple­ment­ed.

T&T’s im­port cov­er, a re­flec­tion of the of­fi­cial for­eign ex­change re­serves, has fall­en from 11.2 months in 2015 to 8.5 months at the end of last year, or from US$11.2 bil­lion in 2015 to US$8.5 bil­lion.

The change in the out­look from S&P and the sug­ges­tion that there is a re­al pos­si­bil­i­ty of a down­grade with­in the next 12 to 24 months, is an­oth­er sign that this econ­o­my is in trou­ble.

You add to this bpTT’s pro­jec­tion that the coun­try’s largest gas pro­duc­er will pro­duce up to 15 per cent less of the com­mod­i­ty than it had hoped for and it should tell us that there will be no V-shaped re­cov­ery.

As we re­flect on the first year of the sec­ond term of the Dr Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion, what con­cerns me is the re­luc­tance to re­ly on the da­ta.

It is as if, like the Olympics, we are pre­pared to hope for out­comes that the da­ta sug­gests will not hap­pen with­out a change in the vari­ables.

In oth­er words, for T&T’s ath­letes to per­form bet­ter and at a sus­tained lev­el, there must be sys­tem­at­ic changes in the coun­try.

There must be a recog­ni­tion that tal­ent alone is not enough to ex­cel at the high­est lev­els. There are not many Us­ain Bolts out there and as much as Ja­maica is full of tal­ent, it has a prop­er sys­tem to grad­u­ate its ath­letes from pri­ma­ry school to sec­ondary and through col­lege pro­grammes.

Ja­maica’s lev­el of coach­ing is recog­nised glob­al­ly and if you look close­ly at the is­land, it has in­creas­ing­ly looked be­yond just sprint­ing to mid­dle dis­tances and field events. They have not done as well in field events as yet but they are im­prov­ing and there is clear strat­e­gy.

T&T must in­tro­spect and see how it may im­prove its struc­ture or, some may ar­gue, put a re­al struc­ture in place to al­low for the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of tal­ent and its har­ness­ing.

We must find a way to recog­nise that sport re­quires fi­nan­cial sup­port and the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee is right that the Gov­ern­ment alone can­not be ex­pect­ed to fund all the re­quire­ments for our ath­letes.

We have the best sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties in the Cari­com, bar none, and we con­tin­ue to un­der-per­form.

The un­der-per­for­mance in sport is not unique. The re­al­i­ty is that our coun­try has not done as well as we could have in so many as­pects of our lives be­cause we refuse to do the hard work of dri­ving pub­lic pol­i­cy based on what the da­ta tells us.

How else do we ex­plain some of the things the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance has done over the last five years?

How do you square the de­ci­sion to leave the ex­change rate where it is for so long that now, it is all but im­pos­si­ble to have any re­al ben­e­fit from al­low­ing it to float to its re­al val­ue?

How do you ex­plain Mr Im­bert’s de­ci­sion to put off deal­ing with the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Sys­tem and pen­sion re­form in some mirac­u­lous hope that we will no longer be an age­ing pop­u­la­tion and that pen­sions are un­sus­tain­able?

How do we ex­plain the coun­try’s be­lief that the day will not come when the Se­nior Cit­i­zen Grant will have to be touched un­less we put things in place to make it con­trib­u­to­ry?

And how do you ex­plain the seem­ing Os­trich-like re­sponse to the re­al­i­ty that the world is mov­ing to a net-ze­ro car­bon re­al­i­ty and this coun­try’s econ­o­my will be ad­verse­ly im­pact­ed?

We must stop hop­ing against hope for pos­i­tive out­comes that we did not put the struc­tures in place for to yield the re­sults.

The coun­try must de­mand the use of da­ta in de­ci­sion mak­ing.

If we do put the right struc­tures in place and then have the hard work, smarts and dis­ci­pline, I as­sure you, for ex­am­ple, that we will see the medal count in­crease on the ath­let­ic front and the coun­try just might fi­nal­ly be­gin to live up to its promise.