Two con­cepts shaped my thoughts as I nav­i­gat­ed meet­ings in Aichi-Nagoya, Japan, dur­ing the 20th Asian Games: pur­pose­ful ra­tio­nal­i­ty and the sport­ing in­dus­tri­al com­plex.

​These con­trast­ing per­spec­tives—shared by one Japan­ese and one Trin­bag­on­ian thought leader—of­fered es­sen­tial agency as I looked in­to the crys­tal ball to en­vi­sion the fu­ture of Caribbean sport. So much is hap­pen­ing in the world of sport that, at times, it is hard to keep up.

​But keep­ing up, no mat­ter how dif­fi­cult, is im­por­tant. In coun­tries where sports suc­cess has made sig­nif­i­cant strides—as re­flect­ed by mea­sur­able met­rics—a clear for­mu­la with var­i­ous it­er­a­tions emerges.

Fun­da­men­tal build­ing blocks sig­nal iron­clad rules: in­vest­ing in long-term ath­lete de­vel­op­ment and grass­roots in­ter­ven­tions. In many in­stances, this re­quired trans­form­ing the broad­er sports en­vi­ron­ment. There is a long-term strat­e­gy. Struc­tur­al re­form with a 10- to 20-year win­dow is al­most manda­to­ry for sus­tain­able progress.

​Ac­cord­ing to Sheikh Joaan Bin Hamad Al Thani, pres­i­dent of the Olympic Coun­cil of Asia (OCA)—which owns the Asian Games—”sports pos­sess the pow­er to bring peo­ple to­geth­er, tran­scend­ing lan­guages, cul­tures, bor­ders, and dif­fer­ences.” He al­so ex­pressed his hope that the Games will serve to deep­en Asian friend­ships, ex­pand a shared ap­pre­ci­a­tion of di­ver­si­ty, and, im­por­tant­ly, pass the OCA’s dreams on to the next gen­er­a­tion.

The big goal is for the 20th Asian Games to be a lega­cy for the fu­ture. The mis­sion is to make the Games a suc­cess and en­sure they leave a last­ing lega­cy be­yond a one-time sport­ing event.

On an­oth­er oc­ca­sion, I will have a deep­er con­ver­sa­tion about the in­clu­sion of sports spe­cif­ic to Asia and “new” sports. The Asian Games have now over­tak­en the In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee (IOC) Sum­mer Olympics in both size and num­bers. In­deed, 370 gold medals will be award­ed by the Oc­to­ber 4 clos­ing cer­e­mo­ny.

​At the start on Sep­tem­ber 19, 11,000 ath­letes shared the dream of stand­ing atop the podi­um. With the 2028 Los An­ge­les Olympics just two years away, the Asian Games of­fer a clear in­di­ca­tor of where Asian con­ti­nen­tal ath­letes and Olympic pro­grammes stand at this point in time, in ad­di­tion to every­thing else on the strate­gic sto­ry­board.

​Com­pet­i­tive and de­vel­op­men­tal pro­grammes will be thor­ough­ly “stress-test­ed.” That is the prac­ti­cal, on-the-field re­al­i­ty. With­in the cor­ri­dors of pow­er and on the side­lines of nu­mer­ous meet­ings, there was a de­ter­mi­na­tion to side­step pro­pa­gan­da, emp­ty words, and plat­i­tudes.

​Notwith­stand­ing the fact that in­ter­ac­tions with the in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia by glob­al Olympic move­ment power­bro­kers were a mas­ter­class in strate­gic com­mu­ni­ca­tions, dis­cus­sions were based on part­ner­ship and win-win out­comes rather than ze­ro-sum games: find­ing con­sen­sus, re­solv­ing prob­lems through di­a­logue, and strength­en­ing co­op­er­a­tion through ac­tion­able next steps.

​A path for­ward lies in learn­ing the lessons of his­to­ry while un­der­stand­ing the ne­ces­si­ty of cre­at­ing a new in­sti­tu­tion­al en­vi­ron­ment—one that fos­ters a sus­tain­able Caribbean sports econ­o­my built on in­no­va­tion and a growth mind­set en­abled by hon­est dis­cus­sions.

​This en­vi­ron­ment must di­rect­ly ad­dress the chal­lenges fac­ing Glob­al South and Small Is­land stake­hold­ers with­in the broad­er IOC ecosys­tem. The gap will on­ly con­tin­ue to widen un­less Glob­al South and Small Is­land na­tions take own­er­ship of their own sports ecosys­tems. There­in lies the op­por­tu­ni­ty—or the in­sur­mount­able ob­sta­cle.