"T&T has a very frag­ile mem­o­ry of things that we do. I say frag­ile be­cause it is eas­i­ly for­got­ten and eas­i­ly bro­ken." - Win­ston "Gyp­sy" Pe­ters.

Gyp­sy calls it a "frag­ile mem­o­ry", I call it a "gone and for­got­ten" cul­ture. We erase and start over throw­ing away in the process the ben­e­fits of his­to­ry.

The in­au­gur­al edi­tion of the Caribbean Games was held in Guade­loupe in 2022 from June 29 to Ju­ly 3. It wasn't easy to get to that point fol­low­ing the 2009 can­cel­la­tion of what would have been the first edi­tion. T&T was the host but the gov­ern­ment of the day (2009) can­celled due to the H1N1 Virus.

The Guade­loupe Games it­self had to be pushed back from 2021 due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. The Games, even­tu­al­ly, was held lit­er­al­ly against all odds.

The sec­ond edi­tion was due to be held in 2025- this year- to date the Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion of Na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tees (CANOC) has not found any CANOC mem­ber in­ter­est­ed.

But back in June 2009- a June 25, 2009 head­line in a T&T dai­ly news­pa­per read - Ques­tions Linger over can­cel­la­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the ar­ti­cle: The H1N1 Virus has tak­en the blame for the can­cel­la­tion of the in­au­gur­al Caribbean Games (Ju­ly 12-19) and its en­su­ing im­pli­ca­tions but many stake­hold­ers and crit­ics re­main un­sat­is­fied as to the ex­pla­na­tion for T&T's with­draw­al as host.

But that 2009 ship has sailed.

What is the is­sue with the Caribbean Games that have seen the Games be­come a CANOC prob­lem child? Why is there that per­cep­tion? What im­pact did T&T's can­cel­la­tion of the Games in 2009 have on the fu­ture of the Games?

In re­spect of the 2009 Games - there is still an un­re­solved fi­nan­cial mat­ter to the tune of 10 mil­lion-plus TT dol­lars that is still to be de­ter­mined by the liq­uida­tor Price­Wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers (PWC) T&T. That's 16 years of mil­lions of TT dol­lars in lim­bo.

The Caribbean Games should be em­braced but it's not. Sun­day (June 29) rep­re­sent­ed three years since Guade­loupe 2022 and could have been the day of the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the 2025 edi­tion (the sec­ond CANOC Caribbean Games).

It's im­por­tant when re­flect­ing on the va­garies of life not to al­low anger, re­sent­ment and ill will to con­sume your emo­tions.

In re­cent times, it has played out in the glare of the cit­i­zens of the twin-is­land Re­pub­lic of T&T. The ten­den­cy to re­act to neg­a­tive out­comes by seek­ing scape­goats and some­one to blame. In the world of sport that's the path­way to re­peat­ed fail­ure. Learn­ing from fail­ure re­quires that you first ac­cept re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. It's a prin­ci­ple of suc­cess and ex­cel­lence.

To move for­ward as a na­tion in every as­pect of life in­clud­ing sport. We must learn from our his­to­ry and be en­cour­aged by it.

We owe that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to our an­ces­tors, the youth and gen­er­a­tions not yet born.

On Sat­ur­day (June 28), the Bel­mont Ex­ot­ic Styl­ish Sailors (B.E.S.S) at­tend­ed the fu­ner­al of the leg­endary King Sailor and Bel­mont icon Ja­son Grif­fith, a bar­ber by trade, who played fan­cy sailor mas from 1946. He learnt from George "Di­a­mond Jim" Hard­ing who start­ed the fan­cy sailor mas in the late 1930s. Mr Grif­fith brought out fan­cy sailor bands from 1980.

He played foot­ball with the Colts team known as the "Bel­mont Bat­tal­ion".

A true leg­end and icon a vic­tim of T&T's gone and for­got­ten cul­ture.