WAL­TER AL­IBEY

The world gov­ern­ing body for Sam­bo, the In­ter­na­tion­al Sam­bo Fed­er­a­tion, has once again come to the res­cue of the T&T Sam­bo Team by pro­vid­ing fund­ing for their stay at a prop­er ho­tel in Casablan­ca, Mo­roc­co.

The T&T team is there to com­pete at the Sam­bo World Cham­pi­onships which starts to­day and con­clude on Mon­day, and yes­ter­day, a re­lease from Ja­son Fras­er, pres­i­dent of the four-year-old Na­tion­al Sam­bo Fed­er­a­tion said the team was made to stay in a four star ho­tel, cour­tesy the ISF.

The team has been strapped for cash al­though the Min­istry of Sports pro­vid­ed them with tick­ets to take the ath­letes to Mo­roc­co. Sport Min­is­ter Dar­ryl Smith, at a launch to dis­trib­ute the tick­ets had said that gov­ern­ment did not have the fund­ing to send more ath­letes to the cham­pi­onships.

Fras­er, who is al­so a mem­ber of the in­ter­na­tion­al fed­er­a­tion, ex­plained yes­ter­day that the team did not even have mon­ey for food and prop­er ac­co­mo­da­tion and there­fore it was due large­ly to his in­flu­ence that the team was giv­en cash to pro­vide its mem­bers with food and re­move them from Ho­tel An­fa Port, which pro­vid­ed con­di­tions un­suit­able for ath­letes prepar­ing for a world cham­pi­onship tour­na­ment, at a cost of TT$147,000.

Fras­er told the Guardian it was not the first time that the TT team has had to be saved by an out­side or­gan­i­sa­tion. The lo­cal Sam­bo boss said: "It is not the first time that they have come to our aid at a world cham­pi­onship. They did so in Be­larus in 2012, when then Min­is­ter of Sports Anil Roberts dis­ap­point­ed the team and in 2013 in St Pe­ters­burg, Rus­sia."

The Russ­ian Sam­bo fed­er­a­tion, it is un­der­stood, al­so pro­vid­ed the TT team with TT$650,000 in equip­ment which is be­ing kept at a store­house in the West. The equip­ment was giv­en be­cause of the im­pres­sive per­for­mance of the TT team a few years ago.

Fras­er said he was very thank­ful to min­is­ter Smith for pro­vid­ing them with the tick­ets, as well as Toy­ota T&T and First Cit­i­zens for help­ing the team in off-set­ting some of its ex­pens­es.

Keron Bourne will be the first in the four-man team to go in­to ac­tion to­day. He will first weigh in this morn­ing as he has four pounds to lose to qual­i­fy for the 57kg cat­e­go­ry.

Two oth­er TT fight­ers–Mar­tin Joseph and ris­ing tal­ent Joash Walkins–will both weigh in to­mor­row morn­ing and are ex­pect­ed to be in­volved.

The Sam­bo boss said he was con­fi­dent T&T would be able to medal at the world cham­pi­onship de­spite hav­ing to com­pete against over 109 coun­tries.

He said they could be con­tact­ed at (+0626 100347) for any­one will­ing to pro­vide as­sis­tance.