"It's our biggest rep­re­sen­ta­tion ever at one of these games. The de­mands on our staff are enor­mous and ac­tu­al com­pe­ti­tion is still to be­gin!"

Dr Ter­ry Ali, one of three doc­tors as­signed to the Com­mon­wealth Games, said he and oth­er mem­bers of this coun­try's med­ical and ther­a­peu­tic staff have had their hands full even be­fore Wednes­day's start to the Com­mon­wealth Games.

Along with Dr Ali, as­sist­ing T&T's 129-ath­lete con­tin­gent in Glas­gow, Scot­land are doc­tors Anil Gopiesingh and Zynul Khan. Three phys­io­ther­a­pists and six mas­sage ther­a­pists are al­so part of the team, which have felt their share of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the team's prepa­ra­tions par­tic­u­lar­ly last Sat­ur­day where they worked with­out a break from ear­ly morn­ing to mid­night.

News com­ing out of the camp is that T&T has been for­tu­nate hav­ing no cur­rent ma­jor in­jury or ill­ness scares.

A mi­ni out­break of flu-like symp­toms that have af­fect­ed around 12 Scot­tish Com­mon­wealth Games as­sis­tants have not af­fect­ed any mem­ber of the T&T con­tin­gent.

There have al­so been no pos­i­tive drug tests with­in the T&T camp. Of­fi­cials of the Com­mon­wealth Games have adopt­ed a rig­or­ous ap­proach to ran­dom drug test­ing on a round-the-clock bases.

They of­ten come as an in­con­ve­nience to the ath­letes and man­age­ment, ac­cord­ing to chef-de-mis­sion Ian Hy­po­lite, who gave in­sight in­to the process­es of drug test­ing. "It has an­noyed a few peo­ple, but we must re­alise that this is now a se­ri­ous busi­ness. Our con­tin­gent is par­ty to a 'where­abouts pol­i­cy', which means that our ath­letes must be at a cer­tain lo­ca­tion at a giv­en time for pos­si­ble drug test­ing. If they are not, they are searched out and test­ed wher­ev­er they are."

Ath­letes may al­so be se­lect­ed at ran­dom in the din­ing ar­eas or at train­ing, apart from the usu­al prac­tice of post-com­pe­ti­tion test­ing.

?