Chan­dri­ka Ram­sub­hag, pres­i­dent of the T&T Bad­minton As­so­ci­a­tion (TT­BA) says he sees a lot of po­ten­tial in the lo­cal play­ers with an eye to­wards qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los An­ge­les (LA28), USA.

T&T has on­ly been rep­re­sent­ed in the sport at the Olympic Games once be­fore by Ja­maica-born Dr De­bra O'Con­nor who com­pet­ed in women's sin­gles at the 1996 Sum­mer Olympics in At­lanta.

She was a record ten-time win­ner of the women's sin­gles event at the Care­ba­co Games Caribbean Re­gion­al Bad­minton Cham­pi­onships.

Last week­end, the T&T team end­ed a dom­i­nant dis­play at the Ju­nior Caribbean Re­gion­al Bad­minton Con­fed­er­a­tion (CARE­BA­CO) Cham­pi­onships which was held at the Cen­tro De­porti­vo Playa in Von­del­laan, Oran­jes­tad, Aru­ba with triple-crown quar­tet Asia Lee Waller (Girls Un­der-13), Ethan Ram­cha­ran (Boys U-17), T'Shelle Barens (Girls U-17), and Vishal Ram­sub­hag (Boys U-19) lead­ing the way to a 47-medal haul which in­clud­ed 16 gold medals (five sin­gles, 11 dou­bles), eight sil­ver and 23 bronze medals to top the ta­ble ahead of Suri­name with 28,5 medals (eight gold, 12,5 sil­ver, eight bronze).

Com­ment­ing on the per­for­mance of the team, the se­nior Ram­sub­hag said, "We cre­at­ed his­to­ry in 2023 win­ning the Boys' U-19 for the first time since the tour­na­ment start­ed in 1972 and this year, we made his­to­ry again by hav­ing a re­peat in that age-group (Vishal Ram­sub­hag) along with four triple crowns."

He added, "Based on what the play­ers were able to ac­com­plish in Aru­ba we see the po­ten­tial for us to have rep­re­sen­ta­tion in 2028 Olympics in Los An­ge­les."

Par­tic­i­pa­tion or qual­i­fi­ca­tion for bad­minton at the Olympic Games nor­mal­ly comes via the Pan Amer­i­can Games qual­i­fiers or via the in­ter­na­tion­al world rank­ings, which ac­cord­ing to Ram­sub­hag can on­ly be re­alised by com­pet­ing at in­ter­na­tion­al tour­na­ments on a reg­u­lar ba­sis by lo­cal play­ers.

"But, for that to hap­pen it will take hav­ing a per­ma­nent place for us to train our ath­letes to ful­fil that dream be­cause the cur­rent sched­ul­ing of the Na­tion­al Rac­quet Cen­tre in Tacarigua will not work if we are to go to the next lev­el."

He added, "Our ath­letes' de­vel­op­ment is con­tin­u­ous but the arrange­ment of hav­ing a place to train for two weeks, then stop for a month then train for a month then stop for a month is not do­ing any good for the sport of bad­minton, and needs to be bet­ter sort­ed by those with the pow­er to do so."

The bad­minton al­so lament­ed the lack of sup­port and ex­po­sure giv­en to the play­ers and team say­ing the team al­so needs sup­port from the lo­cal me­dia.

"Bad­minton won 16 gold crowns at this re­gion­al tour­na­ment and we’ve seen noth­ing in any lo­cal tele­vi­sion sta­tions. Peo­ple on­ly know what they see and if bad­minton is not seen, it lim­its the sup­port in terms of spon­sor­ships.

"We would like the cor­po­rate world to know there are oth­er sports that need fund­ing oth­er than crick­et and foot­ball. The fact is that more chil­dren do bad­minton at CXC and CAPE lev­el than any oth­er sport for School Based As­sess­ment (SBA’s), but we don’t have a per­ma­nent place for de­vel­op­ment so they turn to oth­er sports."

Ram­sub­hag al­so thanked the spon­sors for get­ting on board and sup­port­ing the team in achiev­ing its goal and said the TT­BA is look­ing for­ward to the Min­istry of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment recog­nis­ing and re­ward­ing the play­ers and the en­tire team for a mag­nif­i­cent per­for­mance in 2024.

He said, "De­spite the chal­lenges, we had two spon­sors that came for­ward to spon­sor the team uni­form in Rosco Petro­com Lim­it­ed (Mo­bil) and Trinidad En­er­gy Pro­duc­tion Re­sources Lim­it­ed, and we say thank you very much.

"We would al­so like to thank the mem­bers of the ju­nior team for their stel­lar ef­forts as well as the coach­es and par­ents for fund­ing trav­el and ac­com­mo­da­tions so that we could have com­pet­ed in Aru­ba, and al­so to the peo­ple of Aru­ba a big thank you for the hos­pi­tal­i­ty pro­vid­ed."

T&T's re­sults at 2024 Ju­nior Care­ba­co

Sin­gles:

Boys U-11: 1 Je­re­mi Fras­er (Sur); 2 Is­sey Sami­ran (Sur); 3 Julián Bayas (Mex) & ]Aryan Bhagoutie (T&T)

Boys U-15: 1 Ruiz Lieuw-A-Joe (Sur); 2 Liam Per­sad (T&T); 3 Zane Setrowid­jo­jo (Sur) & ]Ethan Jit­mans­ingh (T&T)

Boys U17: 1 Ethan Ram­cha­ran (T&T); 2 Ter­rell Her­nan­dez (T&T); 3 Ter­rence Li (Sur) & Nicholai Je­bods­ingh (T&T)

Boys U19: 1 Vishal Ram­sub­hag (T&T); 2 Daniel Ford (Jam); 3 Kaveer Ra­moutar (T&T) & Aditya Ma­haraj (T&T)

Girls U-11: 1 La-Fay Sten­hui­js (Sur); 2 Yazmyn East­mond (B'dos); 3 Mc Kaylee De Gama (Sur) & De­von­nye Vin­cent (T&T)

Girls U-13: 1 Asia Lee Waller (T&T); 2 Chayenne Ram­lal (Sur); 3 C’Ayra Kro­mosoe­to (Sur) & Aarad­hya Marchani (Aru)

Girls U-15: 1. Ri­ana Wi­jn­gaarde (Sur); 2 Sa­hara Brath­waite (B'dos); 3 Izel­lah Martell Ve­ga (P/Ri­co) & Samiya Karim (T&T)

Girls U-17: 1 T'Shelle Barnes (T&T); 2 Jade As­mored­jo (Sur): 3 Mish­ka Be­har­ry (Guy) & Ten­niya To­bias (T&T)

Girls U-19: 1 Ama­ra Urquhart (T&T); 2 San­na Guria (T&T); 3 Kara-Ash­ley Robert­son (T&T) & Danyelle Barnes (T&T)

Mixed Dou­bles:

U-13: 1 Liam Ra­jku­mar/Asia Lee Waller (T&T)2 Dami­an Ramkissoon/C’Ayra Kro­mosoe­to (Sur); 3 Lo­gan Wait­he/Rishelle Boodoos­ingh (T&T) & Naveer Sal­ick/Chris­tine Per­sadie (T&T)

U-15: 1 Ri­car­do Sagram­s­ingh/Samiya Karim (T&T); 2 Ruiz Lieuw-A-Joe/Ri­ana Wi­jn­gaarde (Sur); 3 Xavi Haynes/Kim­mara Tull-Williams (B'dos) & Isa­iah Hinds/Sa­hara Brath­waite (B'dos)

U-17: 1 Ethan Ram­cha­ran/T'Shelle Barnes (T&T); 2 Siew­dass Tris­tan/Kimo­ra Lee Bisses­sar (T&T); 3 Ter­rence Li/Jade As­mored­jo (Sur) & Ter­rell Her­nan­dez/Cheyenne Bho­la (T&T)

U-19: 1 Vishal Ram­sub­hag/San­na Guria (T&T); 2 Aditya Ma­haraj/Ama­ra Urquhart (T&T); 3 Kaveer Ra­moutar/Kara-Ash­ley Robert­son (T&T) & Za­mir Ali/Danyelle Barnes (T&T)

Boys Dou­bles:

U-11: 1 Je­re­mi Fras­er/Is­sey Sami­ran (Sur); 2 Lyam Clarke (B'dos)/Joshua Fer­nan­des (Sur); 3 Michael Balvin/Avari Wells (T&T) & Aryan Bhagoutie/Zi­dan Ho­sein (T&T)

U-13: 1 Liam Ra­jku­mar/Lo­gan Wait­he (T&T); 2 Nathan Fer­nan­des/Dami­an Ramkissoon (Sur); 3 Gi­an Fe­li­ciano/Yadiel Car­dona (P/Ri­co) & Kai Black­man/Anik Price-Sou­datt (B'dos)

U-15: 1 Deepesh Lal­wani/Aryan Pu­rushotam­das (Aru); 2 Ethan Jit­mans­ingh/Zachary Rigues (T&T); 3 Xavi Haynes/Isa­iah Hinds (B'dos) & Chi­jioke Kalu/Liam Per­sad (T&T)

U-17: 1 An­drew Bab­wah/Ethan Ram­cha­ran (T&T); 2 Ter­rence Li/Shaquille Somed­jo (Sur); 3 Yan Car­dona/Yadrián López Fe­li­ciano (P/Ri­co) & Siew­dass Tris­tan/Max­imus Walsh (T&T)

U-19: 1 Aditya Ma­haraj/Vishal Ram­sub­hag; 2 Daniel Ford (Jam)/Shailon John­son (B'dos); 3 Ki­ran Ram­per­sad/Kyrese To­bias (T&T) & Xavio Alexan­der/Frank Wad­dell (Guy)

Girls Dou­bles:

U-13: 1 Rishelle Boodoos­ingh/Asia Lee Waller (T&T); 2 Kait­lyn De Vries/C’Ayra Kro­mosoe­to (Sur); 3 Chayenne Ram­lal/Lind­sey Schmeltz (Sur) & Aarad­hya Marchani (Aru)/Chris­tine Per­sadie T&T)

U-15: 1 Azaria Gaskill/Samiya Karim (T&T); 2 Han­na-Christa Emanuels/Ri­ana Wi­jn­gaarde (Sur); 3 Sa­hara Brath­waite/Kim­mara Tull-Williams (B'dos) & Tan­vi Orie/Kayleigh Ra­jku­mar (T&T)

U-17: 1 T'Shelle Barnes/Ten­niya To­bias (T&T); 2 Kimo­ra Lee Bisses­sar/Is­abelle Waller (T&T); 3 Gi­ana Col­ly­more/Xi­an Trot­man (B'dos) & Cheyenne Bho­la/Ar­i­an­na Man­sook (T&T)

U-19: 1 Danyelle Barnes/San­na Guria (T&T); 2 Kara-Ash­ley Robert­son/Ama­ra Urquhart (T&T); 3 Ar­i­anne Downes/Kaila Wal­cott (B'dos) & Le­shaunte Berkley/Gabrielle Fe­lix (Guy)