World record-hold­er Par­a­lympic ath­lete Akeem Stew­art is push­ing to re­turn with medals and a new world record in the up­com­ing 2024 Par­a­lympic Games in Paris from Au­gust 28–Sep­tem­ber 8. 

 As the clock ticks on, he’s hav­ing a mix­ture of hope, de­ter­mi­na­tion, and a per­son­al mis­sion to ho­n­our his ail­ing fa­ther.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, af­ter an in­tense work­out, he said, “The main fo­cus is to go and medal and hear my na­tion­al an­them play; that would be the most cher­ished mo­ment for me.”

De­spite fac­ing sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges, in­clud­ing a lack of sup­port and fund­ing, Stew­art has eyes on set­ting an­oth­er world record, even though he doesn’t feel ful­ly pre­pared. 

“I am not a per­son to doubt my abil­i­ties, but I’ll say I’m 70 per cent ready. Maybe when I get to Paris, I’ll be ful­ly ac­ti­vat­ed to com­pete. But as for now, it’s hard to say.”

All eyes are on Stew­art, a pow­er­house in dis­cus and javelin events. 

This is main­ly be­cause he’s the on­ly ath­lete rep­re­sent­ing the coun­try at these games.

Asked how he felt about this, he said it’s an ho­n­our but al­so a con­cern over the fu­ture of the Par­a­lympic move­ment in T&T.

“I’ll say it’s still dis­ap­point­ing be­cause nor­mal­ly we have three, four ath­letes, and I’m not on­ly one; if I chose to call it a day, there’s not one in par­a­lympics. They need to start scout­ing and look­ing for re­place­ments.”

Af­ter miss­ing the 2020 Toyko Games, Stew­art said he has had time to re­view his strat­e­gy and strength­en his abil­i­ties. 

“It was tough for me men­tal­ly be­cause I was on the verge of giv­ing up track and field be­cause no mat­ter how hard I train and im­prove, there is no com­pe­ti­tion, so I feel like I was just wast­ing my time.”

He ad­mit­ted that the pan­dem­ic and a kid­ney can­cer di­ag­no­sis for his fa­ther have changed his per­spec­tive on how he com­petes. 

And so, his re­turn to the Par­a­lympic Games is dri­ven by some­thing deep­er—ded­i­cat­ing his per­for­mance and po­ten­tial wins to his dad.

“Every­thing I do is al­ways for my fa­ther. I think what will make this spe­cial is the re­turn to the sport af­ter not com­pet­ing.”

And with just two weeks to go, fi­nan­cial is­sues and a lack of re­sources threat­en his chances.

“II find go­ing out to Paris; I’m the on­ly ath­lete; they could do a lot bet­ter.

“As an ath­lete, I nev­er get sup­port lo­cal­ly. Peo­ple will talk when you win, but when you’re strug­gling, no­body is there. My fo­cus is to make my fam­i­ly and coach (Wade Franklyn) proud.”

This is why he plans to use the glob­al stage to call for eq­ui­ty in sports not on­ly in Trinidad and To­ba­go but across the world.