Bri­an Lewis

Isn't lead­er­ship about the cap­tain be­ing the last to leave the ship?

Some­thing is just not adding up. It's well es­tab­lished that youth, chil­dren and young peo­ple fol­low the ex­am­ple of their el­ders. These days it's an up­hill bat­tle keep­ing young peo­ple mo­ti­vat­ed and in­spired.

Find­ing pos­i­tive role mod­els who can be used as pos­i­tive ex­am­ples isn't an easy task. Where have we gone wrong as a coun­try and so­ci­ety?

Do we have a cul­ture that en­cour­ages sac­ri­fice? How do we en­cour­age young peo­ple to put aside a sense of en­ti­tle­ment and/or de­pen­den­cy?

Last Fri­day gov­ern­ment and op­po­si­tion MPs unit­ed in par­lia­ment to raise their own re­tire­ment al­lowances–29 votes in favour, no votes against.

Ac­cord­ing to me­dia re­ports, the de­ci­sion was based on the de­sire to pro­vide for those who have served their coun­try through yeo­man ser­vice at great sac­ri­fice of their own per­son­al cir­cum­stances; their fam­i­ly life and their health.

It was said that our par­lia­men­tar­i­ans had con­tributed to this coun­try at great per­son­al sac­ri­fices and have shown an un­par­al­leled lev­el of pa­tri­o­tism.

So what about the rest of us? What about the long-suf­fer­ing pop­u­la­tion who over the years would have placed col­lec­tive and in­di­vid­ual trust in the leg­is­la­ture and ex­ec­u­tive to lead and gov­ern us well and put in place poli­cies and ac­tion plans that serves the best in­ter­est of the na­tion?

How do we ask young peo­ple to make per­son­al sac­ri­fices and to for­go feel­ings of en­ti­tle­ment and de­pen­den­cy?

Get­ting to the moun­tain top and achiev­ing any­thing of sig­nif­i­cance, pur­pose and mer­it re­quires sac­ri­fice.

Ath­letes who dream of as­cend­ing to the pin­na­cle have to work hard and make many sac­ri­fices. Noth­ing worth­while can be achieved with­out toil­ing up­wards through the night. It comes with the ter­ri­to­ry. Ex­cel­lence and achieve­ment are de­mand­ing task mas­ters.

Every­where our sports­men and sports­women turn, they see and read where it's one rule for some and an­oth­er rule for them.

Aren't they pa­tri­ots? Don't they make per­son­al sac­ri­fices? Don't they have fam­i­lies?

How do we ask our youth and young peo­ple to con­tribute to build­ing a na­tion and a so­ci­ety? How do we ask them to put coun­try be­fore self? How do we ask them to put the wel­fare of oth­ers first? How do we show them how to be great lead­ers?

Our ath­letes de­serve much bet­ter than they are cur­rent­ly get­ting. Time is not a lux­u­ry. Time lost can't be re­gained.

The sys­tem is fail­ing those who de­serve the sup­port the most.

Na­tion­al sport or­gan­i­sa­tions must get to­geth­er and cre­ate a na­tion­al sport strat­e­gy that will de­fine a blue­print for the sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment of sport and set out guide­lines for the re­duc­tion of in­equities.

A na­tion­al sport strat­e­gy will pro­vide pol­i­cy ad­vice and strate­gic guid­ance to the na­tion and min­is­ters of gov­ern­ment on poli­cies for sport and phys­i­cal recre­ation and al­so mon­i­tor pro­grammes and sys­tems.

It will pro­pose and ad­vo­cate for sport to be con­sid­ered as an in­de­pen­dent sec­tor and for the eco­nom­ic im­pact of sport to be recog­nised.

Sport has proven its abil­i­ty to have a pos­i­tive im­pact on the coun­try's in­ter­na­tion­al, re­gion­al and con­ti­nen­tal im­age.

T&T has a rich sport his­to­ry. Build­ing on that his­to­ry is a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty not to be tak­en light­ly.

We have been in­spired by Rod­ney Wilkes who won this coun­try's first Olympic medal when T&T par­tic­i­pat­ed in its first sum­mer Olympic Games.

Our suc­cess at the Lon­don 2012 Olympics cre­at­ed high ex­pec­ta­tions for more Olympic medal suc­cess. Rio 2016 is two years away.

Time is not on the side of our ath­letes.

There is much that needs to be done. We can't car­ry on as if all is well.

Bri­an Lewis is the pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Olympic Com­mit­tee.

The views ex­pressed are not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Olympic Com­mit­tee.

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