Sean Nero

Olympic cy­clist Njisane Phillip is stand­ing be­hind the de­ci­sion of his close friend and fel­low Olympic ath­lete An­drew Lewis who has bro­ken his si­lence about strug­gles with both dyslex­ia and the at­ten­tion-deficit dis­or­der (ADD).

At a re­cent fund-rais­er host­ed by en­er­gy com­pa­ny At­lantic at Dig­i­cel IMAX in Wood­brook, Port-of-Spain, held in aid of the Dyslex­ia As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T and the Spe­cial Child Foun­da­tion at Dig­i­cel IMAX Lewis re­vealed that he was di­ag­nosed at age nine, while at­tend­ing Dun­ross Prepara­to­ry School.

Four­teen years on, Lewis, 23, said he felt the time was right to come clean with the pub­lic and help to raise the na­tion­al aware­ness lev­el for these caus­es which are so com­mon­ly mis­un­der­stood.

In a T&T Guardian in­ter­view Phillip, who al­so suf­fers from ADD, ad­mit­ted to be­ing sur­prised by Lewis' de­ci­sion to go pub­lic with things he had long kept pri­vate, but de­clared his unswerv­ing sup­port for his com­rade.

Phillip is in France com­pet­ing at a cy­cling grand prix for qual­i­fi­ca­tion in the Cy­cling World Cup sched­uled for lat­er this year.

He al­so has its sights set on next year's World Cham­pi­onships and ul­ti­mate­ly the Olympic Games in 2016 sched­uled to take place in Brazil.

He said, "We all have dif­fi­cul­ties. We are not per­fect. It should mo­ti­vate and show young­sters that even with dif­fi­cul­ties you can still make it and be suc­cess­ful in life. An­drew is a re­al­ly close friend of mine. I didn't know, but it was nice and brave of him to let the world know about his con­di­tion.

"...Haven't spo­ken to him since and I didn't know till you told me. I think it would cre­ate a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing and (I) hope it in­spires many to come clean."

It's al­most im­pos­si­ble to de­tect that ei­ther pro­fes­sion­al ath­lete have these chal­lenges. Even with ADD Phillips man­ages to re­tain his fo­cus both in train­ing and dur­ing com­pe­ti­tion.

For Lewis, it's the same. De­spite be­ing di­ag­nosed with dyslex­ia the sailor is ca­pa­ble of read­ing a com­pass and nav­i­gat­ing the vast ocean alone in his laser craft.

And, in no way does Phillip, who has a pas­sion for track and field and box­ing too, con­sid­er him­self as be­ing dif­fer­ent. He was con­vinced that it's the same for Lewis.

Un­der­scor­ing his com­mit­ment and ded­i­ca­tion to do his best al­ways Phillip de­clared he was nev­er afraid to work and make the nec­es­sary sac­ri­fices for the na­tion­al good.

Point­ing to his Lon­don 2012 ex­pe­ri­ences, Phillip ex­plained when he missed out on the bronze medal he used to wake up at 4 am to train. Con­vinced that suc­cess has not es­caped him, he said train­ing now starts an hour ear­li­er all with the hope of bring­ing him firm­ly with­in reach of a medal.

While Lewis fo­cus­es on ad­vanc­ing the rate at which he reads, Phillip was de­sirous of go­ing back to school.