Desmond Ret­ess is no or­di­nary na­tive of Princes Town. The 62-year-old for­mer in­stru­ment and elec­tron­ic tech­ni­cian of the Ste Made­line Sug­ar Fac­to­ry in Ca­roni found his niche in body­build­ing af­ter the clo­sure of the com­pa­ny in 2003.

De­spite a valiant ef­fort in the sec­ond half with ten men, a youth­ful Trinidad and To­ba­go Se­nior Men’s Team suf­fered a 1-0 de­feat to St Vin­cent and the Grenadines in Sun­day’s in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly at the Chilli Play­ing field in George­town.

Twice West In­dies were in po­si­tions to win and threw away the sec­ond MyTeam11 ODI clash against In­dia at the Queen's

Af­ter yet an­oth­er lack­lus­tre per­for­mance by the West In­dies bats­men, led to an­oth­er de­feat at the hands of In­dia, skip­per Ja­son Hold­er is call­ing on the bats­men to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty dur­ing the post-match press con­fer­ence at the Queen's Park Oval on Sun­day.

Ju­do­ka Gabriel­la Wood was ex­plo­sive in the first round of women's (+78kg) elim­i­na­tion on Sun­day at Sports Cen­ter One in the Na­tion­al Sport­ing Vil­lage to reach the quar­ter­fi­nals but un­for­tu­nate­ly did not make it to the next stage at the Pan Amer­i­can Games in Li­ma, Pe­ru.

Ju­do­ka Gabriel­la Wood reached the quar­ter­fi­nals in the women's (+78kg) elim­i­na­tion yes­ter­day but was elim­i­nat­ed by the num­ber one play­er in the World, Cu­ba's Idalys Or­tiz at the Pan Amer­i­can Games in Li­ma, Pe­ru.

Dex­ter 'Peck' Fran­cis for­mer Strike Squad play­er and for­mer na­tion­al foot­ball cap­tain, was ho­n­oured by the St Christo­phers An­gli­can Church of Siparia week of ac­tiv­i­ties in cel­e­bra­tions of its 69th Trav­ellers Ral­ly/Eman­ci­pa­tion Ser­vice pro­gramme last month.

As the coun­try cel­e­brat­ed 181 years of Eman­ci­pa­tion on Au­gust 1st, there were those cus­tom­ary mes­sages that high­light­ing the po­si­tion of the African com­mu­ni­ty in the coun­try. Where­as neg­a­tives such as crime re­ceived much at­ten­tion ob­vi­ous pos­i­tives and up­lift­ing deeds did not get the same de­gree of recog­ni­tion. There is no gain­say­ing that the African com­mu­ni­ty has con­tributed im­mense­ly in every field of so­ci­ety such as in the econ­o­my, ed­u­ca­tion, pol­i­tics, sports and cul­ture. The African com­mu­ni­ty em­bod­ies the de­vel­op­ment of the so­ci­ety just as every oth­er group and this must not be lost even as we strive to cor­rect the ex­ist­ing so­cio-eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal short­com­ings in our so­ci­ety.

T&T will be the host of the Com­mon­wealth Youth Games (CYG) for 2021 and it set a new bar for the Com­mon­wealth Games in this mod­ern era of sport move­ment in the re­gion, David Grevem­berg, the Com­mon­wealth Games Fed­er­a­tion's Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer (CEO) said.

It was an­oth­er ster­ling day's per­for­mance by T&T's ath­letes at the Pan Amer­i­can Games in which three more medals were added to the tal­ly in Li­ma, Pe­ru on Sat­ur­day.

The John O'Brien trained four-year-old chest­nut colt Gen­er­al JN won the fea­ture event over 1750 me­tres on the main track at San­ta Rosa Park, Ari­ma on Sat­ur­day. The Jer­ry Narace owned thor­ough­bred could not have been more im­pres­sive in vic­to­ry un­der ap­pren­tice Ri­co Her­nan­dez as he land­ed his hat­trick of vic­to­ries and in the process turned back all his chal­lengers whom he beat in the Pres­i­dents Cup on June 19, dur­ing the Labour day card.

Hate Speech is a grow­ing is­sue in sports and while the gen­er­al feel­ing is that it may not yet be at an alarm­ing lev­el at home, the tim­ing of ed­u­cat­ing ath­letes and fans should be soon­er in­stead of be­ing de­layed.