Bri­an Lewis

With­out fear or favour!

It's im­por­tant in life to not have re­grets. What­ev­er you are do­ing or choose to do must have a com­pelling sense of pur­pose and com­mit­ment. Noth­ing worth­while has ever been achieved with­out a high risk propen­si­ty. The fear of fail­ure has been an in­sur­mount­able moun­tain for many peo­ple. No one wants to look like an ut­ter fool or id­iot.

There are no guar­an­tees. No one can say with ab­solute cer­tain­ty that they will achieve their stat­ed or de­clared goals or ob­jec­tives.

I was telling some­one a few days ago that I have one mis­sion which is to im­prove con­di­tions for ath­letes, sports­men and women in T&T and to do so with in­tegri­ty and eth­i­cal­ly.

I am clear in my mind that by fo­cus­ing on our ath­letes, sports­men and women, sport will make sig­nif­i­cant and sus­tain­able progress.

But in do­ing so and in striv­ing to achieve that mis­sion, there are crit­i­cal suc­cess fac­tors.

Not every­one will agree with me and not every­one will see things the way I see it and that's just fine as I re­spect every­one's right to their opin­ion and views and to dis­agree with me

But hav­ing ex­pe­ri­enced first hand and in­ti­mate­ly the highs and lows of a sport­ing life in T&T, I feel con­fi­dent that serv­ing our ath­letes, sports­men and women and striv­ing to cre­ate the en­abling en­vi­ron­ment that will al­low them to ex­e­cute on their crit­i­cal suc­cess fac­tors is the right thing to do.

Should the fo­cus be on the ath­letes, sports­men and women to such an ex­tent that oth­er stake­hold­er's in­ter­est and needs are side­lined?

That's not what I am say­ing or seek­ing to do. What I am say­ing is that it's the ath­letes who have to per­form and by their suc­cess there is a rip­ple ef­fect that will re­dound to the ben­e­fit of sport in gen­er­al and the coun­try by ex­ten­sion.

I have no prob­lem ex­plain­ing why I am fo­cused on ath­letes but there are peo­ple in de­ci­sion mak­ing and pol­i­cy mak­ing po­si­tions who pre­fer to spec­u­late and naysay with­out ask­ing me why?

I am a phone call away and will be more than hap­py to have a cor­dial dis­cus­sion.

Mine is a sim­ple per­spec­tive: fix things for the ath­letes, sports­men and women es­pe­cial­ly those who have the po­ten­tial to be suc­cess­ful at the elite and Olympic lev­el.

The his­to­ry of our sport has been one where sports­men and women have car­ried the bur­den of sport­ing suc­cess no mat­ter how that suc­cess is mea­sured.

T&T has ben­e­fit­ted in more ways than one from the suc­cess of our ded­i­cat­ed sports­men and women.

For how long will the cries of our sports­men and women go un­heed­ed and ig­nored?

Those who choose to ig­nore the re­al­i­ty on the ground can feel free to do so. I have no in­ten­tion of turn­ing away from what I know from first­hand ex­pe­ri­ence to be the re­al sto­ry.

In an ef­fort to raise pub­lic aware­ness and kick start fund rais­ing, I am par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Trinidad In­ter­na­tion­al Marathon.

I am as de­ter­mined to fin­ish the 26 mile jour­ney as I am con­fi­dent that set­ting a tar­get of 10 or more Olympic gold medals by the year 2024 is the right ob­jec­tive as is es­tab­lish­ing a ded­i­cat­ed T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) Ath­lete Wel­fare and Prepa­ra­tion Fund that is in­de­pen­dent and non-gov­ern­men­tal.

The #10golds24 Ath­lete Wel­fare and Prepa­ra­tion fund en­ables the pub­lic, for­mer na­tion­al sports­men and women, fans and sup­port­ers of sport and cor­po­rate T&T to con­tribute and fi­nan­cial­ly sup­port ath­letes who as­pire to qual­i­fy for the Olympics and be an Olympic cham­pi­on.

We all have choic­es in life but what­ev­er choice you make re­mem­ber ac­tion speaks loud­er than words.

Bri­an Lewis is the pres­i­dent of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee. The views ex­pressed are not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of the TTOC.