"I feel re­al­ly amaz­ing and ex­cit­ed that the gold is com­ing home to Ja­maica. I have proved that I am a true com­peti­tor, that I have the de­ter­mi­na­tion of a cham­pi­on," said Oblique Seville, the new men's 100 me­tres World cham­pi­on.

The 24-year-old had been work­ing hard on his fin­ish as he was quot­ed say­ing: "Fin­ish­ing strong in the last 30 to 40 me­tres was some­thing I was strug­gling with the whole sea­son. But now I have per­fect­ed it and I was con­fi­dent that if I could do it in the fi­nal, I would win. I knew if I had a strong fin­ish, the oth­ers will not catch me".

Two as­pects that stand out are where he said, "I am a true com­peti­tor. I have the de­ter­mi­na­tion of a cham­pi­on. And this: "I knew if I had a strong fin­ish, the oth­ers will not catch me".

If you want to know the dif­fer­ence be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and Ja­maica, it's there - with­in the ta­pes­try of that back­sto­ry - that in­cludes time, truth, re­silience, pa­tience, and process, at­trib­ut­es for­eign to su­per­fi­cial think­ing.

To­day's Things That Mat­ter is a re­flec­tion on the in­gre­di­ents of Ja­maica's suc­cess as Flag­bear­ers for the Caribbean and the Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion of Na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tees (CANOC). They con­tin­ue to achieve the glo­ry that T&T deeply crave and de­sires.

It should come as no sur­prise that Team TTO 's Shani­qua Bas­combe has been re­born in Ja­maica un­der the coach­ing of Shanikie Os­bourne, a Ja­maican track coach. The first fe­male coach to head a track club in Ja­maica. The an­swer is in the hid­den truths, not su­per­fi­cial analy­sis.

Giv­en T&T's cul­ture of su­per­fi­cial re­view and analy­sis, we will for­ev­er miss the boat. Why? It al­lows those who should be called out to evade ac­count­abil­i­ty. It per­pet­u­ates con­ve­nient short-term think­ing. The ap­pli­ca­tion of a ban­dage and balm.

The cul­ture of su­per­fi­cial­i­ty is de­lib­er­ate. It ben­e­fits the few at the ex­pense of the many. The sports land­scape is no dif­fer­ent from our pol­i­tics, busi­ness, me­dia, ed­u­ca­tion, med­i­cine, art, mu­sic and our so­cial ex­pec­ta­tions. The re­al ques­tion is how long again be­fore we fer­ment the ver­sion of change that will (1) open the path­way to a T&T vi­sion of ex­cel­lence that does jus­tice to the lim­it­less po­ten­tial and tal­ent that runs in the veins and blood of the peo­ple of the twin-is­land Re­pub­lic. (2) Trans­form and re­build an en­vi­ron­ment that pro­vides re­al sup­port sys­tems that work.

When will we get fed up and claim - (not re­claim as we nev­er had ei­ther ) - our au­ton­o­my and agency?

Truth mat­ters? Let the ath­letes who have been made in­vis­i­ble speak their truth with­out fear of vic­tim­i­sa­tion and vin­dic­tive spite. You want to talk about safe­guard­ing and ath­lete wel­fare? Let's truth speak freely and fear­less­ly. Let those who are erased, hid­den, un­heard, un­seen and in­vis­i­ble re­veal their truth.

Not the cu­rat­ed ver­sion of the truth in­tend­ed to hide au­then­tic ac­count­abil­i­ty or ad­vance those with even more dan­ger­ous, de­struc­tive and self­ish hid­den agen­das or those with un­ques­tioned bi­as­es and prej­u­dices. We need to stop be­ing su­per­fi­cial, con­trived, ma­nip­u­la­tive and fake.

Let truth that mat­ters be seen and heard - the messy, dan­ger­ous, painful and crim­i­nal parts. Let truth re­al­ly mat­ter.

Speak­ing about truth that mat­ters- call­ing for Dwight Yorke to be fired or ask­ing him to re­sign is as su­per­fi­cial as it gets. We keep re­peat­ing past mis­takes. Yorke isn't the prob­lem.