This past week, in the midst of all the bad news, Trinidad and To­ba­go had those mo­ments we of­ten dream of when our ath­letes made us proud at the Com­mon­wealth Games in Eng­land.

The coun­try ap­plaud­ed with pride, and right­ful­ly so, the achieve­ments of triple medal­list Nicholas Paul, dou­ble medal­list Ja­reem Richards and his 4x400 team­mates, the 4x100 me­tres men's re­lay team and the oth­er ath­letes.

Paul gave T&T its first cy­cling gold medal in over half a cen­tu­ry with the keirin ti­tle and added sil­ver (sprint) and bronze (kilo­me­tre time tri­al) to be­come the coun­try's first triple medal­list at a sin­gle games. Richards sur­passed his per­son­al best in tak­ing the 200 me­tres and 4x400 me­tres gold along­side Dwight St Hillaire, Asa Gue­vara and Machel Ce­de­nio, end­ing this coun­try’s 56-year gold medal drought in this event at the Games. T&T last won the Com­mon­wealth 4x400 ti­tle in 1966, when Lennox Year­wood, Kent Bernard, Ed­win Robert and Wen­dell Mot­t­ley topped the field in Ja­maica.

Our chests swelled with pride when we heard the Na­tion­al An­them played on the steel­pan twice as proud ath­letes stood on the ros­trum with gold medals on their chests. Nev­er mind that as we ap­proach 60 years of in­de­pen­dence, we are yet to de­clare steel­pan the na­tion­al in­stru­ment.

Yet, our lack of fo­cus on that de­c­la­ra­tion is per­haps equal on­ly to the lack of at­ten­tion paid to en­sur­ing there are prop­er train­ing fa­cil­i­ties and events to give young lo­cal tal­ent a prop­er foun­da­tion for in­ter­na­tion­al events.

Many times, the suc­cess of these young men and women hinges on them leav­ing T&T on schol­ar­ships or to train with pro­fes­sion­al out­fits on for­eign soil. Yet, their love of coun­try re­mains in their hearts as they proud­ly wear the T&T colours when they get to re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al cham­pi­onships.

It is com­mend­able that na­tion­als used so­cial me­dia plat­forms to en­cour­age the ath­letes to achieve ex­cel­lence. This did not go un­no­ticed by Ce­de­nio, who thanked the fans for the love showed to them, not­ing it spurred them on to their gold-win­ning per­for­mance.

Now that the ath­letes have done us proud, it is time cit­i­zens give some­thing back to them for their dri­ve and com­mit­ment.

Al­ready, Sports Min­is­ter Sham­fa Cud­joe has an­nounced the medal­lists will be well re­ward­ed through the 2017-2027 Re­ward and In­cen­tives Frame­work.

We hope that in ad­di­tion to this mon­e­tary re­ward, these young men will be used as men­tors in state pro­grammes for our youth at a time when it is so des­per­ate­ly need­ed. Their achieve­ments can al­so be recog­nised in a tan­gi­ble way at this year’s In­de­pen­dence/Re­pub­lic Day Awards cer­e­mo­ny.

More im­por­tant­ly, how­ev­er, we hope the Na­tion­al Am­a­teur Ath­let­ics As­so­ci­a­tion and oth­er sport­ing bod­ies with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for ath­letes get their acts to­geth­er to find ways to col­lab­o­rate with the Gov­ern­ment and cor­po­rate T&T to give ath­letes the plat­forms to achieve in fu­ture.

This coun­try is awash with tal­ent but many sport­ing ath­letes fall through the cracks be­cause there is no op­por­tu­ni­ty for re­al de­vel­op­ment lo­cal­ly.

The Ja­maicans con­tin­ue to shine on the world stage and maybe there is a les­son in their mod­el for the au­thor­i­ties here to look at. Ap­proach­ing this most im­por­tant junc­ture of our T&Ts his­to­ry, how­ev­er, we must look for ways to chart a new and more pro­duc­tive course for fu­ture ath­let­ic teams.