The glob­al news agency Reuters pub­lished an on­line ar­ti­cle on Au­gust 11th, 2024, bold­ly en­ti­tled “Ja­maica’s sprint dom­i­nance comes to a sud­den end in Paris,” pos­si­bly echo­ing the world­wide shock that the green, gold, and black flag did not fly as high as an­tic­i­pat­ed at the Paris 2024 Olympics track and field events a year ago.

To say, how­ev­er, that Ja­maican sprint dom­i­nance has come to an “end,” in­di­cat­ing a fi­nal or ab­solute con­clu­sion, is but a wish­ful thought of the in­ter­na­tion­al com­peti­tors. The Caribbean has fi­nal­ly caught on to the sci­ence of sport, and while still in its growth phase, when the pletho­ra of tal­ent birthed by Caribbean na­tions com­bines with the ev­i­dence-based in­no­va­tion ac­ces­si­ble on their shores, Caribbean ath­letes will be an even greater force.

Sports and ex­er­cise med­i­cine pro­vides ath­letes with em­pir­i­cal­ly sup­port­ed meth­ods for un­der­stand­ing per­for­mance, op­ti­mis­ing train­ing, and en­abling tar­get­ed in­ter­ven­tions.

The state­ment “ath­letes are made, not born” has been the sub­ject of de­bate over the years. How­ev­er, it high­lights the role of the biopsy­choso­cial mod­el in mould­ing our ath­letes from a young age, recog­nis­ing that tal­ent is in­nate. How­ev­er, skills can be learned, re­fined, and re­in­forced over time through struc­tured train­ing, psy­cho­log­i­cal re­silience, and ef­fec­tive sup­port sys­tems. Sports med­i­cine can aid in im­prov­ing per­for­mance in sev­er­al ways, start­ing at the youth lev­el. Move­ment analy­sis en­ables the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of in­ad­e­qua­cies in sport-spe­cif­ic move­ments and the im­ple­men­ta­tion of cor­rec­tive strate­gies and in­jury pre­ven­tion tech­niques.

While struc­tured, in­ten­tion­al play in a sin­gle sport may lead to faster tech­ni­cal mas­tery, it al­so puts our young stars at risk for overuse in­juries, burnout, and men­tal health con­se­quences, which can some­times be fa­tal. Even in this set­ting, the age-old adage ‘pre­ven­tion is bet­ter than cure’ rings true, es­pe­cial­ly since one of the most sig­nif­i­cant pre­dic­tors for fu­ture in­jury is a pri­or in­jury. As such, we must find a bal­ance be­tween struc­tured and un­struc­tured play, where our young ath­letes are en­cour­aged to ex­plore more than one sport, there­by im­prov­ing their mo­tor skills and de­creas­ing in­jury risk at a young age, be­fore fo­cus­ing sole­ly on one sport.

His­tor­i­cal­ly, our ath­letes have of­ten been com­pelled to trav­el abroad to seek the ex­per­tise nec­es­sary to en­hance their per­for­mance due to a lack of spe­cial­ists in the field with­in their home ter­ri­to­ries. This ul­ti­mate­ly cre­at­ed a dis­par­i­ty in which ath­letes with fi­nan­cial means had ac­cess while oth­ers were left be­hind, there­by plac­ing them at a dis­ad­van­tage. How­ev­er, as the field of sports med­i­cine and al­lied move­ment sci­ences con­tin­ues to grow in the Caribbean, we can be­gin to close this gap. Our ath­letes will have easy ac­cess to re­sources that can aid in pro­pelling their ca­reers, such as ed­u­ca­tion on prop­er tech­nique that takes in­to con­sid­er­a­tion their own anatom­i­cal vari­ances and in­di­vid­u­alised re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­grammes post-in­jury, util­is­ing a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary ap­proach that in­cludes coach­es, phys­io­ther­a­pists, sports med­i­cine doc­tors, sports psy­chol­o­gists, nu­tri­tion­ists, and stake­hold­ers. This can pro­vide a ‘way out’ for many of our im­pov­er­ished youth whose ath­let­ic prowess and po­ten­tial of­ten go un­tapped and of­fer sup­port for pro­grammes seek­ing to use sport as a step­ping­stone for these young peo­ple.

One of the great­est crick­eters in his­to­ry and a son of Trin­bag­on­ian soil, Bri­an Lara, agrees that tal­ent is no longer enough to make a mark on the world stage and re­it­er­ates the call for greater in­vest­ment in sports sci­ence. In an in­ter­view with a T&T news­pa­per just last year, he stat­ed: “The lack of good fa­cil­i­ties and acad­e­mies with the right tech­nol­o­gy to grow the game kept us aside. We felt that our crick­eters were nat­u­ral­ly good, and the way we learnt the game was still the best way. No, it was not, and if we still be­lieve that to­day, we are in se­ri­ous trou­ble. The sci­ence of this beau­ti­ful game, crick­et, has sig­nif­i­cant­ly changed, and we have to catch up. The lat­est tech­nol­o­gy must be used in our crick­et, class­rooms and state-of-the-art fa­cil­i­ties for our prac­ti­cals. There are no short­cuts, this is se­ri­ous busi­ness.”

Lara’s sen­ti­ments ap­ply be­yond crick­et. A longer pro­fes­sion­al ca­reer for ath­letes means greater in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion and, by ex­ten­sion, ex­po­sure for our is­land na­tions—many of which are tourism-de­pen­dent. Suc­cess­ful ath­letes are not just flag-bear­ers; they are cul­tur­al am­bas­sadors and eco­nom­ic as­sets. The ques­tion is: Will Caribbean na­tions in­vest in their tal­ent or con­tin­ue look­ing out­ward de­spite the grow­ing ex­per­tise with­in?

The fu­ture of sport in the Caribbean hinges not just on raw tal­ent but on a sys­temic com­mit­ment to de­vel­op­ment, in­fra­struc­ture, and sci­ence-based train­ing. With con­sis­tent in­vest­ment, col­lab­o­ra­tion among stake­hold­ers, and a cul­tur­al shift that em­braces mod­ern ap­proach­es to sport, the Caribbean is poised not just to re­turn to dom­i­nance but to re­de­fine it.

Dr Ash­ley Lewis is a med­ical doc­tor pur­su­ing the MSc. Sports Med­i­cine in the Fac­ul­ty of Sport, UWI.