This coun­try could end up with a back­log of events when the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic is over, and it will be the headache of or­gan­i­sa­tions like the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T (Sportt) to fix a chaot­ic cal­en­dar.

Chair­man Dou­glas Ca­ma­cho is al­ready brac­ing for it, so much so, that the Sportt Com­pa­ny has been in touch with Na­tion­al Sport­ing Or­gan­i­sa­tions (NSOs) through­out the last few weeks since non-es­sen­tial ser­vices across the coun­try, have been shut down.

How­ev­er, post-pan­dem­ic is when the re­al work will be­gin. While all sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties have been on lock­down as the coun­try seeks to lim­it the spread of the COVID-19 virus, Ca­ma­cho has giv­en his as­sur­ances say­ing, “We have told the NG­Bs that as soon as it is pos­si­ble to open back up and al­low the ath­letes to com­mence train­ing that they could do so.”

Ca­ma­cho al­so added that the cur­rent down­time af­fords the Sportt Com­pa­ny a chance to car­ry out re­fur­bish­ment work that has long been de­layed.

He said, “It will be an op­por­tu­ni­ty to maybe to do some work on fa­cil­i­ties that we would for­mer­ly have to shut down phys­i­cal­ly to be able to do. Now, they’re shut down any­way, it is an op­por­tu­ni­ty to plan it that way and be­fore we ful­ly open back up we will ad­dress first and do the re­me­di­al work.”

The great chal­lenge, how­ev­er, is how Ca­ma­cho and his team will deal with a clus­tered cal­en­dar when the dead­ly out­break is all over. Not on­ly will NSOs be seek­ing the use of fa­cil­i­ties but ath­letes who are train­ing ahead of the post­poned Olympics will de­mand time and space for prac­tice.

The Sportt Com­pa­ny is al­so prepar­ing for the 2021 Com­mon­wealth Youth Games (CYG) which T&T will be host­ing be­tween Au­gust 1-7.

Ca­ma­cho told Guardian Me­dia Sports, “As I say, the ones with the biggest chal­lenge will be the do­mes­tic com­pe­ti­tions, Com­mon­wealth Youth Games, the mas­ter’s swim­ming, the in­ter­na­tion­al hock­ey tour­na­ment, all of those things that were planned in 2021, how will they now be af­fect­ed by 2020 events that roll for­ward?” The CYG 2021 is sched­uled to run con­cur­rent­ly with re­vised Tokyo Olympics next year which takes place from Ju­ly 23 to Au­gust 8.

“If they have to shift the date, we have to know rel­a­tive­ly ear­ly,” the chair­man said.

Scores of events have al­ready been pushed back from the first half of the year, like the Carif­ta Games which was orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled for this week­end.

Ca­ma­cho says be­cause of the age re­stric­tions on some of these ju­nior meets, the or­gan­is­ing bod­ies should con­sid­er rais­ing the age lim­it by a year to fa­cil­i­tate those who will be in­el­i­gi­ble be­cause of where their birth­days fall.

“With re­gards to the lo­cal­ly in­tend­ed events, that is a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. That will be de­pen­dent on when things go back up lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. Maybe a good ex­am­ple would be the two Carif­ta Games," said Ca­ma­cho.

"I think both swim­ming and track were hop­ing they would re­or­gan­ise the Carif­ta Games for the sum­mer pe­ri­od. Whether that will hap­pen now is a lit­tle bit too ear­ly to pro­nounce. It would seem un­like­ly but not im­pos­si­ble.”