The Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs yes­ter­day used a re­lease to elab­o­rate on its Elite Ath­lete As­sis­tance Pol­i­cy (EAAP) which has been the top­ic of con­ver­sa­tion over the past two weeks, par­tic­u­lar­ly among some of T&T's lead­ing track and field ath­letes.

On Tues­day, Olympic triple medal­list Richard Thomp­son chas­tised the Sport Min­istry for not be­ing fi­nan­cial­ly sup­port­ive of all the ath­letes.

He was quot­ed as say­ing on twit­ter: "The Min­istry has a sys­tem in place that is in­tend­ed to help and fa­cil­i­tate ath­letes rep­re­sent­ing the coun­try, but in­stead we feel as though they are against us and have be­come di­rect­ly vin­dic­tive in the process of try­ing to stiff arm us."

The Min­istry did not tak­ing his com­ments light­ly and re­spond­ed say­ing: "The Min­istry finds it re­gret­table that some ath­letes have de­cid­ed to take to so­cial me­dia to air their con­cerns in­stead of seek­ing more de­tails about how they can en­sure com­pli­ance with the process to ac­cess elite fund­ing, which has not changed since its in­cep­tion."

In the re­lease it was stat­ed that T&T's suc­cess at the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el, par­tic­u­lar­ly in track and field, was one of the mo­ti­va­tions be­hind the EAAP in 2006. The Cab­i­net-ap­proved pol­i­cy led to a for­mal mech­a­nism, us­ing a tiered sys­tem, to con­tribute to the prepa­ra­tion and con­tin­ued im­prove­ment of the coun­try's mul­ti­sport Games medal­lists and world-ranked ath­letes. The ap­pli­ca­tions of teams and of ath­letes in non-Olympic sports are con­sid­ered on a case-by-case ba­sis to en­sure that the fi­nan­cial sup­port is avail­able to a wide range of ath­letes who meet the cri­te­ria and have the po­ten­tial to at­tain world-rank­ing or oth­er bench­marks in their sport. There are cur­rent­ly 33 ath­letes in eight dis­ci­plines on the EAAP ros­ter, who have re­ceived fund­ing for the last fis­cal year 2015/16.

What the Pol­i­cy states

The Pol­i­cy clear­ly states that the pay­ment of grants are sub­ject to the avail­abil­i­ty of funds in any giv­en year. De­spite this and oth­er pre­vail­ing con­straints, how­ev­er, for the qua­dren­ni­al pe­ri­od 2012-2016, the Min­istry has dis­bursed in ex­cess of TT$24m to ath­letes and teams in 13 dis­ci­plines.

Pre­dictably, and giv­en the large num­ber of elite ath­letes, track and field re­ceived 73 per cent of that sum, fol­lowed by cy­cling (8.1 per cent) and swim­ming (7.7 per cent). Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the Min­istry al­so con­tributed TT$996,950 to the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee's (TTOC)Olympic Prepa­ra­tion Fund last year which sup­port­ed a pre-Olympic camp.

Giv­ing fur­ther de­tails on how monies has been dis­persed over the past year, the re­lease said that the Min­istry's im­ple­men­ta­tion arm, the Sports Com­pa­ny of T&T (SporTT) as­sist­ed 11 Olympians in sev­en sports with di­rect re­im­burse­ment or pay­ment of ex­pens­es (trav­el, ac­com­mo­da­tion, med­ical, coach­ing) to a to­tal of just over TT$600,000.

"This does not in­clude a range of free ser­vices which has been ac­cessed by 135 plus ath­letes dur­ing 2015-16, such as psy­chol­o­gy, nu­tri­tion, gym ac­cess, mas­sage ther­a­py and re­cov­ery, through its Elite De­vel­op­ment & Per­for­mance Unit (ED­PU)."

Ath­letes who are ben­e­fit­ting

Some of the no­table ath­letes on the pro­gramme for the pe­ri­od 2012-2016, are Keshorn Wal­cott, 2012 Olympic gold medal­list and 2016 Olympic bronze medal­list, Olympians Cleopa­tra Borel (2016 shot put fi­nal­ist), An­drew Lewis (sail­ing), Thomp­son (track and field), Christo­pher George (ju­do), Nigel Paul (box­ing), Njisane Phillip (cy­cling) and, Youth Olympians beach vol­ley­ballers Chel­si Ward and Ma­li­ka Davis and Para-Olympian Nyoshia Cain (track and field).

It was al­so in­di­cat­ed in the re­lease that the re­spec­tive Na­tion­al Gov­ern­ing Body (NGB) and TTOC have a sig­nif­i­cant role in the EAAP dis­burse­ment process, as they are re­quired to cer­ti­fy and en­dorse each ap­pli­ca­tion as well as rec­om­mend the dis­burse­ment in writ­ing, as ev­i­dence that the ath­lete/team has ful­filled the re­quire­ments for fund­ing.

Among the re­quire­ments that en­sure ac­count­abil­i­ty and pro­vide a mon­i­tor­ing gauge, are quar­ter­ly per­for­mance re­ports pre­pared by coach­es/train­ers, an­nu­al train­ing sched­ules, quar­ter­ly track­ing sched­ules pre­pared by coach­es, fi­nan­cial state­ments sup­port­ed by bills for funds pre­vi­ous­ly ac­cessed and med­ical fit­ness re­port.

"While most ath­letes are ful­ly com­pli­ant, there are oc­ca­sions where these doc­u­ments are not forth­com­ing and im­pact on the time­ly pro­cess­ing of ap­pli­ca­tions. Pre­vi­ous­ly when faced with this type of in­com­plete ap­pli­ca­tion, the Min­istry has sought to work with ath­letes to still fa­cil­i­tate fund­ing to en­sure that they are able to con­tin­ue prepa­ra­tion for com­pe­ti­tion.

"Each ath­lete or their rep­re­sen­ta­tive must sign a Ser­vice Lev­el Agree­ment (SLA) which al­so de­tails the mon­i­tor­ing pro­ce­dures and cri­te­ria out­lined above as well as the terms and con­di­tions for a sus­pen­sion or ter­mi­na­tion of fur­ther as­sis­tance.

The re­lease end­ed with the Sport Min­istry reaf­firm­ing it's com­mit­ment to pro­vide qual­i­ty sup­port in en­sur­ing that T&T at­tains the high­est stan­dard of ath­letes at the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el.