For most of last week and over the week­end, three ma­jor sports is­sues cap­tured our at­ten­tion.

On Mon­day, June 26 the mem­bers of the Olympic 4x100 me­tres re­lay team of 2008 brought to the pub­lic's at­ten­tion that the gov­ern­ment of the day had not recog­nised/ser­e­nad­ed them and they have not re­ward­ed them for the re­al­lo­cat­ed Olympic Games gold medal.

Less than a week lat­er, on Sat­ur­day, the West In­dies men's crick­et team failed to qual­i­fy for the ICC ODI World Cup for the first time in the com­pe­ti­tion's his­to­ry. But our sport­ing mis­ery was not done there. On Sun­day, T&T's se­nior foot­ballers, dubbed the So­ca War­riors, would lose 6-0 to the USA in the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup and were boot­ed out of the com­pe­ti­tion.

While the lat­ter two are very de­serv­ing of at­ten­tion, I will fo­cus on con­cerns raised by the 2008 Olympic re­lay team mem­bers, Richard Thomp­son, Marc Burns, Ke­ston Bled­man, Em­manuel Cal­len­der and Aaron Arm­strong, who host­ed a vir­tu­al me­dia con­fer­ence on June 26. They used the fo­rum to high­light that since their el­e­va­tion to the gold medal by the In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee (IOC) on Ju­ly 5, 2022, there has been no of­fi­cial recog­ni­tion by the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Yes, to­day is the first an­niver­sary since Thomas Bach, the IOC pres­i­dent pre­sent­ed the team of six with the de­served gold medals at Olympic House in Switzer­land.

Fol­low­ing the 2008 Bei­jing Olympic Games, the World An­ti-Dop­ing Agency test­ed the B sam­ple of Ja­maica's Olympic and world cham­pi­onship medal­list Nes­ta Carter. Carter's pos­i­tive test — caused him and his team­mates to be stripped of the re­lay gold medal. More­over, it tar­nished the rep­u­ta­tion of Us­ain Bolt, eight years af­ter run­ning the third leg in the fi­nal with T&T close be­hind for the sil­ver medal.

The point was made by Thomp­son and com­pa­ny that the T&T he­roes were not af­ter the sole pur­suit of mon­e­tary re­ward, but rather, on­ly want­ed what they felt was de­served!

The ath­letes ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment that a year lat­er they were not af­ford­ed any recog­ni­tion by the gov­ern­ment for their achieve­ments and were not giv­en any re­ward or up­date on how they would be ho­n­oured, de­spite sev­er­al meet­ings with high-rank­ing cab­i­net mem­bers in­clud­ing Min­is­ter of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Sham­fa Cud­joe. Es­pe­cial­ly af­ter the red-car­pet treat­ment that was af­ford­ed to them by the IOC.

I agree that the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC), the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ics Ad­min­is­tra­tions (NAAA) which is the gov­ern­ing body for track and field in T&T, should have com­bined their re­sources with the gov­ern­ment's help to cel­e­brate the ath­letes' achieve­ments and high­light the fact that our ath­letes com­pet­ed fair­ly on the glob­al stage.

How­ev­er, I can­not agree that the ath­letes were not re­ward­ed when in fact their ini­tial sil­ver medal run was ac­knowl­edged by the Min­istry of Sport - where each ath­lete re­ceived $750,000 (a com­bi­na­tion of $500,000 in cash and $250,000 in Units from the Unit Trust) and the Cha­co­nia Medal - Gold.

The TTOC gave the ath­letes US$40,000 to share among them­selves from its medal bonus pro­gramme ini­ti­at­ed in 2015 but vot­ed to ho­n­our their achieve­ment nev­er­the­less.

The fact is, the ath­letes were pro­mot­ed from sil­ver to gold medals by the IOC, but they were not al­lowed to keep the sil­ver medals, there­fore, they can­not be re­ward­ed for be­ing el­e­vat­ed to gold by keep­ing the sil­ver medal re­wards. No ath­lete wins gold and a sil­ver in the same event at the Olympic Games.

Fur­ther­more, the Min­is­ter erred by not fol­low­ing a sim­i­lar ap­proach of the IOC by invit­ing the team to re­turn their orig­i­nal re­wards and al­low the gov­ern­ment to dis­pense a new and fit­ting mon­e­tary re­ward along with what­ev­er else the gov­ern­ment deemed wor­thy, for ex­am­ple, with a na­tion­al pa­rade and/or a fi­nan­cial re­ward for each of the ath­letes that the coun­try can af­ford (Not ac­cord­ing to Na­tion­al In­cen­tives and Re­wards Frame­work Pol­i­cy which did not ex­ist in 2008 and there­fore should not be used as the guid­ing pol­i­cy) since that was im­ple­ment­ed af­ter 2008 Games which is one of the con­tentious is­sues at hand.

Ac­cord­ing to the gov­ern­ment's new re­ward in­cen­tive pol­i­cy, an Olympic Games re­lay gold medal is worth $500,000.

Fur­ther­more, for this year's In­de­pen­dence Day cel­e­bra­tions, the gov­ern­ment should show­er the ath­letes with T&T's high­est ho­n­our as was done for our pre­vi­ous two gold medal­lists — Hase­ly Craw­ford (1976) and Keshorn Wal­cott (2012) with the Or­der of Trinidad and To­ba­go (ORTT) be­cause an Olympic gold medal is the high­est achieve­ment that any ath­lete in the world can achieve.

I am com­pelled to ask, what did the coach­es of these six ath­letes get for the de­vel­op­ment roles that they played with these ath­letes that led them to Olympic suc­cess? While the ath­letes made a case for them­selves, who is mak­ing a case for their coach­es that helped mould­ed them in­to what they have be­come - Olympic gold medal­lists for life?

In the T&T Sen­ate on June 26, Min­is­ter Cud­joe said that in Ju­ly 2022, two mem­bers of the team met with her to dis­cuss plans to de­vel­op track and field in the coun­try as well as pos­si­ble re­wards for their up­grad­ed gold medal. De­spite sub­mit­ting a writ­ten pro­pos­al, the ath­letes claim the gov­ern­ment has not re­spond­ed since talks end­ed around Au­gust or Sep­tem­ber, last year.

The Min­is­ter re­vealed that the ath­letes ad­vo­cat­ed for a month­ly stipend of US$5,000 (TT$35,000) to be paid to them for the rest of their lives and in re­turn they would make about ten ap­pear­ances per year at schools across the coun­try as mo­ti­va­tion­al speak­ers among oth­er ser­vices.

Fi­nal­ly, the Min­is­ter and her min­istry have enough time to plan a na­tion­al recog­ni­tion cer­e­mo­ny for the ath­letes and the coach­es.

Coach­es can­not on­ly be seen as scape­goats for the poor per­for­mances of play­ers when teams are beat­en and pos­i­tive re­sults are not achieved. Please ho­n­our the coach­es along­side the ath­letes.