Al­though it hap­pened 14 years af­ter the ac­tu­al race and with­out the pomp and ex­cite­ment of a medal cer­e­mo­ny at an Olympic Games venue, that did not di­min­ish the ster­ling achieve­ments of T&T’s 4x100m men’s re­lay team, who fi­nal­ly col­lect­ed their well-de­served gold medals on Tues­day.

At a sim­ple, scaled down event at the Olympic Mu­se­um in Lau­sanne, Switzer­land, Aaron Arm­strong, Ke­ston Bled­man, Marc Burns, Em­manuel Cal­len­der and Richard “Tor­pe­do” Thomp­son re­ceived their sport ac­co­lades from In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee (IOC) pres­i­dent Thomas Bach.

Speak­ing on be­half of the team, Thomp­son de­scribed be­ing “very ex­cit­ed and re­lieved at the same time” and ex­pressed grat­i­tude that the IOC had done all that they could to pro­tect the in­tegri­ty of the Olympics. It was a sen­ti­ment shared by many in this na­tion.

This proud mo­ment for Team TTO came af­ter the IOC stripped the Ja­maican quar­tet of Nes­ta Carter, Michael Frater, Us­ain Bolt and Asafa Pow­el of gold be­cause Carter had test­ed pos­i­tive for the banned sub­stance methyl­hexa­neamine eight years af­ter the ac­tu­al 2008 Bei­jing Games.

It was a long time com­ing, but jus­tice has fi­nal­ly been de­liv­ered for the team and the his­tor­i­cal records will now re­flect that this coun­try’s two-medal achieve­ment at the Games now com­pris­es that re­lay gold medal and sil­ver for Thomp­son in the men’s 100 me­tres sprint.

While T&T’s Na­tion­al An­them was not played at the Bird Nest Sta­di­um in Bei­jing in 2008, the de­lay in de­liv­er­ing sport­ing jus­tice pro­vid­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty for his­to­ry to be made this week as a steel­pan ren­di­tion, con­duct­ed by Akua Lei­th, was played at an Olympic cer­e­mo­ny for the first time.

What is re­gret­table, how­ev­er, is that yet again, be­cause of a dop­ing vi­o­la­tion, this coun­try’s ath­letes were de­nied their shin­ing mo­ment on an in­ter­na­tion­al stage.

In 2015, the Lon­don 2012 men’s 4x100 sprint re­lay team of Ke­ston Bled­man, Marc Burns, Em­manuel Cal­len­der and Richard Thomp­son were up­grad­ed to sil­ver af­ter Unit­ed States track star Tyson Gay got a one-year dop­ing ban af­ter test­ing pos­i­tive for an an­a­bol­ic steroid. The US had fin­ished sec­ond to Ja­maica in that race.

With the re­al­lo­ca­tion of medals in that event, T&T was pro­mot­ed from bronze to sil­ver, and France, from fourth to bronze.

Had that medal been award­ed at the Lon­don Games in­stead of a few years lat­er, there would have been the im­me­di­ate added lus­tre to the coun­try’s best Olympic per­for­mance to date, which was high­light­ed by Keshorn Wal­cott’s gold medal in the javelin event.

Thank­ful­ly, on both oc­ca­sions, Olympic glo­ry was de­layed but not de­nied.

Hearti­est con­grat­u­la­tions to these five ath­letes, whose ex­ploits on the track are a source of na­tion­al pride and could serve as an in­spi­ra­tion for oth­ers to fol­low.

The tim­ing of the re­al­lo­ca­tion cer­e­mo­ny, tak­ing place as it did dur­ing a week where deaths and protests threat­ened to spark dis­rup­tions across the coun­try, pro­vid­ed a mo­ment of light and hope.

T&T needs many more mo­ments like these to shift the na­tion­al fo­cus to the tal­ent and po­ten­tial that ex­ists in abun­dance with­in this pop­u­la­tion.

Hats off to the quin­tet of Arm­strong, Bled­man, Burns, Cal­len­der and Thomp­son for demon­strat­ing sports­man­ship and pa­tience in their long wait for their Olympic gold medals. This grate­ful na­tion salutes you.