Dou­ble Olympic sil­ver medal­ist Richard Thomp­son is okay and ex­pects to re­sume train­ing in two weeks' time. Thomp­son was in­volved in a ve­hic­u­lar ac­ci­dent on New Year's Day in Port-of-Spain which is now the sub­ject of a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion. The sprint­er has been ad­vised not to speak pub­licly on the mat­ter un­til the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is con­clud­ed. "The first two days af­ter the ac­ci­dent tran­spired, I had a lit­tle pain in my neck and I found my­self wak­ing up to some mi­nor headaches, but as of now, the on­ly dis­com­fort I am ex­pe­ri­enc­ing is a slight pain above my left knee, more to­wards my low­er thigh, and I am hav­ing check ups with my doc­tors to ad­vise me on this.

"The T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee has been very car­ing," Thomp­son told the Trinidad Guardian, "but I would like the peo­ple of T&T who have all shown me so much love, to know that while I un­der­stand their con­cern, hav­ing spo­ken to the doc­tors, it is okay and I should re­sume train­ing in two to three weeks. It is go­ing to take time, and I know it will be a slow progress, but I do not fore­see this in any way de­ter­ring me from be­ing able to ac­com­plish every­thing that I planned for 2009."

The 23-year-old sprint­er was clear­ly will­ing to talk about the New Year's Day ac­ci­dent. "I would love to de­scribe every­thing," he said, "but the po­lice have tak­en ac­tion in terms of in­ves­ti­gat­ing the mat­ter and as a re­sult, my le­gal coun­sel has ad­vised me not to speak on the mat­ter any fur­ther un­til the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is com­plet­ed."

"When the time comes, we will be able to talk open­ly on the mat­ter. My fam­i­ly, Mr Vial­va and I have been in com­mu­ni­ca­tion and it would seem we are on the same page and no one should be wor­ried. Every­thing seems to be quite okay, but again, I am very mind­ful of the gen­uine con­cern of the pub­lic and I ap­pre­ci­ate it very much," dis­closed Thomp­son. The young sprint sen­sa­tion ad­mit­ted that he had learned some im­por­tant lessons.

"You can­not take life for grant­ed and when­ev­er or wher­ev­er you are, you need to be care­ful on the roads. You should al­ways look out for each oth­er as dri­vers and to be aware of every­one around you. "I know peo­ple have said it hap­pened at 4 o'clock in the morn­ing, I was par­ty­ing etc, but it could have hap­pened at any time. I just want to ad­vise every­one to be care­ful on the roads at all times," he not­ed.

Thomp­son said that he has been ad­vised not to dri­ve and he will obey those in­struc­tions un­til his doc­tors tell him oth­er­wise.

Thomp­son cast aside any sug­ges­tion of hir­ing a per­son­al chauf­feur.

"I do not nec­es­sar­i­ly agree with that," he said. "I am an in­de­pen­dent per­son and when it comes to spend­ing my time, I would not re­al­ly like to have be de­pen­dent on some­one to move around."

Thomp­son's fa­ther, Ruthven Thomp­son Sr, told the Sun­day Guardian that it had been a dif­fi­cult time for his fam­i­ly.

"It has been a trau­mat­ic ex­pe­ri­ence for the fam­i­ly as a group, and for me per­son­al­ly I would like peo­ple to know that every­thing we have done is to en­sure our son is safe and se­cure since the ac­ci­dent." "When we got the news and we were on our way dri­ving to the ac­ci­dent, it seemed such a long time, there was just so much fear in our minds, it was a re­lief to see him just there with on­ly cuts and bruis­es. It was a ter­ri­fy­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, not know­ing how he was un­til we got there," an emo­tion­al but car­ing fa­ther in­di­cat­ed.

"We have re­ceived so much out­pour­ing of love and con­cern, so many calls and vis­its; it has re­al­ly been a pleas­ant­ly sur­pris­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. But of course we have read and heard that some per­sons have been an­noyed that we pre­vent­ed them from speak­ing with Richard. And this I need to clar­i­fy, if it came over that way while Richard was at the hos­pi­tal."

Thomp­son se­nior, while ad­mit­ting that it was the fam­i­ly that made the de­ci­sion for Richard to go straight to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, al­so said, "We made our de­ci­sions based on three rea­sons, one, the doc­tors told us that Richard need­ed com­plete bed rest; two, he was on med­ica­tion which meant he was in and out of sleep; three, we did not know the full ex­tent of his in­juries, de­spite the x-rays and the CT scan, the doc­tors want­ed to have an MRI done...so it was as par­ents, my wife (Judy) and I and the rest of the fam­i­ly, be­lieved out of an abun­dance of con­cern and cau­tion, we need­ed to en­sure Richard was giv­en time to re­cu­per­ate, free from any ques­tion­ing."

Ruthven Ju­nior, Richard's el­der broth­er, again want­ed to em­pha­sise, "Richard is my lit­tle broth­er, so when I got the news, his health and well be­ing was my biggest con­cern.....and as I al­so know Monique (Cabral) very well, I had to place that above all else." "As far as Richard goes, I was at first con­cerned for his im­me­di­ate fu­ture, as I know he loves track and field; it is his heart and soul." "As for all the ru­mours. I know that in the fi­nal analy­sis, there were just so much best wish­es, love and re­al con­cern, that I un­der­stand our peo­ple. But at the same time there were some who have nev­er met Richard that were say­ing things that were not true, and this is not good," he re­marked.

The Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs, Gary Hunt was very much in­volved in the wel­fare of Richard Thomp­son and was there at all times, Ruthven Ju­nior said. "Yes, the Min­is­ter of Sports was there at least twice and he and oth­er min­is­ters were al­ways en­sur­ing every­thing was okay."

Ronald Clarke is the un­cle of Richard and al­so his lo­cal­ly based man­ag­er and he said, "We had just left our moth­er's home and an hour lat­er, I re­ceived a call from Richard's mom, and all I asked was how he was, and she said at the time, alive and okay."

"I re­mem­ber Richard at the ac­ci­dent site, ask­ing me to come in­to the am­bu­lance with him, but you are on­ly al­lowed one fam­i­ly mem­ber in the am­bu­lance and his dad was al­ready there. I was just hap­py and thank­ing God he was alive," said Clarke.

But Clarke want­ed to clear the air on some points. "When we were at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal a re­porter asked me if we had ob­tained per­mis­sion from the NWRHA to have a per­son­al body­guard se­cure the area where Richard was rest­ing, as it was a pub­lic in­sti­tu­tion.

"At the time I told him it was for this very rea­son we felt it nec­es­sary to have a guard as oth­er­wise any­one could come and walk up to Richard while he was try­ing to rest and re­cu­per­ate as pre­scribed by the med­ical team around him. I al­so men­tion that when Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters were in hos­pi­tal, I un­der­stand they had se­cu­ri­ty. His re­sponse was Richard was not a min­is­ter, but I said he was a na­tion­al hero.....the next day I read, how I had said Richard was no or­di­nary cit­i­zen. I would hope in the fu­ture, re­spon­si­ble jour­nal­ism would sug­gest peo­ple should not write on mat­ters, un­less they are cer­tain, a per­son has made a re­mark, I nev­er said that."

Ruthven Se­nior al­so want­ed to speak on the role of fam­i­ly in an ath­lete's life. "The ground­ing is crit­i­cal, if you can give your son or your daugh­ter this sort of ed­u­ca­tion be­fore they be­come very suc­cess­ful, it will as­sist them as they move for­ward," "For in­stance at this stage, we do not have much work to do with Richard as he al­ready knows a lot of what needs to be done....but what I will tell him, for the first time, this is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for him to do an in­tro­spec­tion of his own life and where he wants to go. At this stage we can on­ly guide him," "In the fam­i­ly house­hold, Richard Thomp­son knows who the boss is, and so do all of us, it is Judy, my wife ..."

All four fam­i­ly mem­bers stat­ed the un­for­tu­nate death of World Box­ing cham­pi­on 21-year-old Jizelle Sa­landy had made every­one re­alise how for­tu­nate Richard and Monique were to be alive.

Richard con­clud­ed by wish­ing every­one well in­clud­ing Cabral. "I would hope she is okay, the truth is she has been in some pain up to re­cent­ly and I know she want­ed to run in­doors, but giv­en the events, I would ad­vise her not to do that, and in­stead wait for the out­door sea­son.

"As for me, now that I am pro­fes­sion­al, I am not in a sit­u­a­tion where I have to run so many events at the uni­ver­si­ty and in that re­gards, if I do not run in­doors it will not af­fect my plans for the out­door sea­son in 2009," said Thomp­son. "I just wish to thank so many peo­ple who have con­tin­ued to sup­port and be there for me, and mak­ing me feel so hap­py to know that as a team, we were able in Bei­jing to make peo­ple smile and be joy­ous. T&T, thanks for the love ..." Thomp­son con­clud­ed. Thomp­son re­turns to the USA to­day.