Na­tion­al ath­lete Por­tious War­ren's first meet of the sea­son is sched­uled for the week­end of Feb­ru­ary 10-11 but at present, she has a slim chance of throw­ing the iron ball at her sea­son open­er, the Tyson Re­lays in Fayet­teville, Arkansas, USA, as fi­nan­cial sup­port re­mains non-ex­is­tent for the T&T shot put­ter.

War­ren made her de­but at the virus-de­layed 2020 Tokyo Olympics which was held last year. The first-time Olympian ex­celled, ad­vanc­ing out of the qual­i­fi­ca­tion round, to reach the fi­nal and placed 11th over­all. She be­came on­ly the sec­ond woman from T&T to qual­i­fy for the Olympic shot put fi­nal af­ter "Sports­woman of the Year" Cleopa­tra Borel in 2012 and 2016.

"I re­al­ly thought that this year of track and field will be dif­fer­ent and it got me ex­cit­ed. Be­com­ing an Olympic fi­nal­ist re­al­ly gave me hope that I will get the as­sis­tance I need to take my tal­ents to the next lev­el, see­ing that I had made it that far with no help. It’s about two weeks be­fore my sched­uled first meet and I’m cur­rent­ly un­sure on whether or not I will be at­tend­ing," said War­ren, al­so post­ing her dis­may on her Face­book page on Mon­day.

"Due to fi­nan­cial rea­sons, of course, be­cause the as­sis­tance I reached out for help right af­ter re­turn­ing from the Olympics from the Min­istry of Sports but my doc­u­ments are still pro­cess­ing, months af­ter."

War­ren, who trains at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Al­aba­ma, told Guardian Me­dia Sports on Mon­day that she has been train­ing since her par­tic­i­pa­tion at the Tokyo Games un­der the guid­ance of coach Derek Yush.

"I am cur­rent­ly based in Al­aba­ma and train at my Al­ma Mater. I train Mon­day to Sun­day dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing be­tween gym days and ac­tu­al­ly throw­ing days. On meet weeks and down weeks it's a bit dif­fer­ent."

She has pro­vid­ed this in­for­ma­tion on her Elite Ath­lete As­sis­tance Pro­gramme (EAAP) quar­ter­ly track­ing pro­gramme along with all oth­er nec­es­sary in­for­ma­tion to the min­istry via emails and through her lo­cal man­ag­er, John An­dal­cio, who has al­so been in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Sports Min­istry.

"My lo­cal man­ag­er An­dal­cio has been li­ais­ing and email­ing them about the im­por­tance of me re­ceiv­ing fund­ing," said War­ren, adding that the fund­ing is nec­es­sary to cov­er train­ing ex­pens­es, ther­a­py, liv­ing ex­pens­es, bills and train­ing costs etc as men­tioned in her emails that she said she has sent to the min­istry.

An­dal­cio, ac­cord­ing to War­ren, has been en­quir­ing when the Olympic shot put­ter will be able to ac­cess the re­quest­ed fund­ing to train for up­com­ing events such as the World Cham­pi­onships and Com­mon­wealth Games.

In An­dal­cio's most re­cent email (seen by Guardian Me­dia Sports), on De­cem­ber 31, to the Min­istry, he in­formed them that: "Por­tious is in ur­gent need of the Elite As­sis­tance." And asked when will it be re­ceived? The re­sponse came on Jan­u­ary 10 and just as pre­vi­ous­ly, it was the same: "War­ren's ap­pli­ca­tion is still be­ing processed at this time."

And if there's any fur­ther up­date on the ap­pli­ca­tion, her lo­cal man­ag­er will be no­ti­fied.

How­ev­er, frus­tra­tion has start­ed to set in and War­ren fears her goals of, not just reach­ing the next two Olympic Games, Paris 2024 in France and Los An­ge­les in 2028 Cal­i­for­nia, USA, but com­pet­ing for a medal at both edi­tions, will not ma­te­ri­alise.

"I was ea­ger to rep­re­sent my coun­try T&T for at-least two more Olympics with the po­ten­tial to land on the podi­um one of those times. How­ev­er with the fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties and lack of sup­port Paris just might be my last," said War­ren, who in turn asked: “How much longer do ath­letes have to suf­fer to re­ceive help?

"I’m sick and tired of the pro­pa­gan­da and back and forth. I was told I didn’t reach out for help pri­or but I did now, but what dif­fer­ence does it make? When I’m faced with the same fate as a silent mouth. Can some­one make it, make sense?

She added frus­trat­ing­ly: "We are sup­posed to be pro­tect­ing our am­bas­sadors and in­vest­ing in them. I just hope that the younger gen­er­a­tion com­ing up doesn’t have to face the same hard­ship or dif­fi­cul­ties so that they can live up to their true po­ten­tial."

War­ren has a packed sched­ule this sea­son ahead once she gets the fi­nan­cial sup­port through the Elite As­sis­tance of even cor­po­rate spon­sors, start­ing with the Tyson Re­lays; the World In­door Cham­pi­onships in Bel­grade, Ser­bia in March; Flori­da Re­lays and Louisiana State Uni­ver­si­ty (LSU) Re­lays, both in April; the North Amer­i­can, Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (NACAC) Games in Nas­sau, Ba­hamas in May; then back in T&T for the Se­nior Na­tion­al Cham­pi­onships (June); World Cham­pi­onships in Eu­gene, Ore­gon, USA (Ju­ly); and in Au­gust, both the Com­mon­wealth Games in Eng­land and the NACAC Se­nior Cham­pi­onships (Ba­hamas).