Sean Nero

Olympic sailor An­drew Lewis is re­veal­ing to the world that he suf­fers from both dyslex­ia and at­ten­tion-deficit dis­or­der (ADD).While he shows no signs of ei­ther when in the spot­light, the na­tion­al ath­lete broke his si­lence on the top­ic which is still con­sid­ered taboo in T&T, at Wednes­day's fund-rais­er held in aid of the Dyslex­ia As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T and the Spe­cial Child Foun­da­tion at Dig­i­cel IMAX and host­ed by en­er­gy com­pa­ny At­lantic. And in his shar­ing his pri­vate strug­gles with the world, Lewis had to fight back tears. It's a bat­tle he's faced for the past 14 years. Lewis, 23, was di­ag­nosed at age nine. Back then he was a Stan­dard Four stu­dent at Dun­ross Prepara­to­ry School where his strug­gles with read­ing and writ­ing were re­vealed.The teacher in charge was pre­pared to rec­om­mend that he re­main in that class for a sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year when his par­ent re­alised some­thing was not right."My mom and dad im­me­di­ate­ly re­alised that some­thing wasn't right, so they took me to get as­sessed. The as­sess­ment was done by Ms Hamel-Smith and as it turns out, I was di­ag­nosed with dyslex­ia and ADD. In­stead of spend­ing my en­tire child­hood in pri­ma­ry four, my par­ents moved me to Es­he's Learn­ing Cen­tre to get the guid­ance I need­ed. It was here I first start­ed to get the care and ex­tra at­ten­tion I need to cope with dyslex­ia and start feel­ing like I was nor­mal," Lewis told a seem­ing­ly sur­prised gath­er­ing.

Up­on grad­u­at­ing from Es­he's, Lewis went on to The In­ter­na­tion­al School of Port-of-Spain, in West­moor­ings, where pro­vi­sions were made to con­tin­ue strength­en­ing his learn­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties."The truth is aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly I was con­sid­ered weak, but when I spoke, the teach­ers found that I was in­tel­li­gent and saw a dri­ve and de­ter­mi­na­tion in me to suc­ceed, so they al­lowed me to at­tend school. I went to so many ex­tra lessons, to prac­tic­ing my read­ing and writ­ing, all geared to­wards get­ting me to a com­fort­able lev­el. It was tough."At this same time in my life, my sail­ing ca­reer be­gan to take off, so my mind would wan­der a lot on be­ing on the wa­ter. I was al­ways ex­cit­ed about the wa­ter."Even though he was get­ting the help he need­ed, it be­came a lot more dif­fi­cult to hide his dyslex­ia as he en­tered pu­ber­ty. He re­mem­bers a friend's re­quest to sign his (An­drew) name on his door. Lewis sub­sti­tut­ed the let­ter "d" in his first name for "b." This, how­ev­er, is one of the many in­ci­dents on which he can re­flect and laugh.De­spite his chal­lenges and his on­go­ing ef­forts to dis­guise the truth, Lewis made it clear that noth­ing kept him back from dream­ing."I day­dream, but when I do, I dream of suc­cess. I am eas­i­ly dis­tract­ed, but it re­minds me to fo­cus hard­er and more on life. I am aware of every­thing around me; this al­lows me to see things that most don't."I am able to do mul­ti­ple things at the same time; this al­lows me to mul­ti-task re­al­ly well. I have poor pen­man­ship and spelling, so (I) use the lap­top to write. I have dif­fi­cul­ty re­mem­ber­ing names, but I find some­thing that helps me re­mem­ber you."

He is proud of be­ing able to make quick de­ci­sions even though he has not found a way to man­age his cu­rios­i­ty. While get­ting a han­dle on his spa­tial ori­en­ta­tion ob­sta­cles, his read­ing re­mains at a slow pace. None of these oc­cur­rences got in the way of Lewis get­ting his high school diplo­ma, be­com­ing cer­ti­fied in sports stud­ies nei­ther his coach­ing cer­tifi­cates.As a na­tion­al ath­lete, he per­forms the roles of men­tor and coach and was proud to have cre­at­ed his­to­ry as the first na­tion­al ath­lete to com­pete in the laser class at the Lon­don 2012 Olympic Games."I am on­ly 23 years old and I am now open­ing the doors of many dreams and vi­sions. I am cur­rent­ly work­ing on launch­ing my own foun­da­tion which is go­ing to help de­vel­op the sport of sail­ing and help peo­ple see that sail­ing is not just a sport, but al­so a way of life. "I will al­so fo­cus on men­tor­ing kids and ath­letes all over the coun­try and one day around the world who suf­fer from dyslex­ia, cause I know what it's like and I know I can help. While many per­sons may say they 'suf­fer' with dyslex­ia, I can tru­ly say that it has helped me a great deal and is ac­tu­al­ly a gift.

"As luck would have it, dyslex­i­cs are very good at mu­sic, sports, sto­ry- telling, sales, de­sign­ing and hands-on learn­ing. What many peo­ple don't know is that I was ac­tu­al­ly once a good DJ, so I love mu­sic."