Anand Ram­per­sad

Bri­an Lewis, Pres­i­dent of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) de­serves com­men­da­tion for his vis­i­bly proac­tive ef­fort to lay a sol­id foun­da­tion for T&T elite ath­letes to win at least 10 gold medals by the 2024 Sum­mer Olympics through the Ath­lete Wel­fare and Prepa­ra­tion ini­tia­tive.

Any un­bi­ased ob­serv­er will quick­ly ac­knowl­edge that Lewis is dis­charg­ing his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties with pas­sion, op­ti­mism and prac­ti­cal­i­ty.

He is clear about what he would like to achieve, is pas­sion­ate­ly op­ti­mistic and is mak­ing every ef­fort to en­sure that these goals are at­tain­able.

The suc­cess of mod­ern day sports is de­pen­dent up­on a num­ber of pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary stake­hold­ers. The pri­ma­ry stake­hold­ers are the ath­letes who through their re­spec­tive skills and tal­ent per­form out­stand­ing feats to the sat­is­fac­tion of sup­port­ers, spon­sors and every­one else who ap­pre­ci­ate the val­ue of out­stand­ing per­for­mances.

How­ev­er, it is im­por­tant to ap­pre­ci­ate that the suc­cess of ath­letes is con­nect­ed to the or­ga­ni­za­tion­al and man­age­r­i­al skills of sport­ing ad­min­is­tra­tors. This may be more so in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries where eco­nom­ic re­sources and oth­er in­fra­struc­tur­al re­quire­ments may be lack­ing.

Be­hind the pub­lic scenes ad­min­is­tra­tors work as­sid­u­ous­ly to en­sure that all the rel­e­vant re­sources and op­por­tu­ni­ties are avail­able so that elite ath­letes can train with­out un­due non-train­ing is­sues.

Ad­min­is­tra­tors are re­spon­si­ble for the de­vel­op­ment and im­ple­men­ta­tion strate­gic plans that will en­sure con­tin­u­ous im­prove­ment of pro­grammes to achieve clear­ly iden­ti­fi­able goals.

These plans are not on­ly about the ath­letes but al­so the req­ui­site hu­man re­source sup­port.

This is re­quired to en­sure that ath­letes are pro­vid­ed with the cur­rent sci­en­tif­ic train­ing that is avail­able so that they can com­pete in­ter­na­tion­al­ly on an equal foot­ing.

The TTOC Ath­lete Wel­fare and Prepa­ra­tion ini­tia­tive is a man­i­fes­ta­tion of the im­por­tance of a dy­nam­ic and proac­tive sports ad­min­is­tra­tor. Achiev­ing 10 gold medals or more will be a cost­ly ac­tiv­i­ty as po­ten­tial Olympians have to be ex­posed to the best train­ing and oth­er re­sources avail­able.

There­fore, in­stead of sit­ting back and await­ing for the state to dole out funds, Lewis and the TTOC have em­barked up­on cre­ative­ly proac­tive strate­gies to raise funds.

Lewis' ap­peal has been to both cor­po­rate T&T and the gen­er­al pub­lic for spon­sor­ship.

To raise aware­ness and to per­son­al­ly mar­ket the goal of the TTOC he put his body through the gru­el­ing de­mands of walk­ing the 26.2 miles T&T marathon last Sun­day from Freeport junc­tion to the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah.

It was a clear demon­stra­tion of lead­ing from the front. The goal of this ven­ture was to raise $500 000.

His feat was well sup­port­ed by fam­i­ly, friends and mem­bers of the sport­ing fra­ter­ni­ty.

At the end of the walk he re­flect­ed on the wide rang­ing sup­port he re­ceived by stat­ing "I am glad it (the walk) res­onat­ed so deeply with the pub­lic and it just goes to show there are still won­der­ful and tremen­dous peo­ple in this coun­try who want to see the coun­try progress."

Lewis's ef­fort has im­me­di­ate­ly had an im­pact as the coun­try's first Olympic gold medal­ist, Hase­ly Craw­ford.

Craw­ford has pledged his sup­port by of­fer­ing for lease his gold medal and full out­fit he wore when he de­feat­ed Don­ald Quar­rie (Ja­maica) sil­ver medal and Va­leriy Bor­zov (Rus­sia) bronze medal to win 100 me­tres in 10.06 sec­onds at the Mon­tre­al Games. Craw­ford re­it­er­at­ed that win­ning an Olympic gold medal is no easy feat and hence the im­por­tance of pro­vid­ing sup­port to young ath­letes in or­der for them to re­alise their goals.

Cor­po­rate T&T have al­so re­spond­ed pos­i­tive­ly. The Guardian Group have do­nat­ed $250,000 and oth­er spon­sors have been Colum­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, De­loitte & Touche and South­ern Sales, Toy­ota. These ges­tures may be the cue for oth­er cor­po­rate en­ti­ties to fol­low.

The TTOC is al­so ap­peal­ing to cor­po­rate T&T to pro­vide in­tern­ship, men­tor­ship and work op­por­tu­ni­ties for elite ath­letes. This strat­e­gy will help pro­vide the ath­letes with an im­por­tant liv­ing com­fort which will al­low them to train freely with­out the bur­den of hav­ing to search for fi­nan­cial sup­port.

Lewis has al­so used his week­ly Guardian col­umn to ar­tic­u­late his ideas about the ad­min­is­tra­tion of sports and al­so the im­por­tance of sports as a means of build­ing the so­cial and eco­nom­ic cap­i­tal of the coun­try. There are im­por­tant lessons for ad­min­is­tra­tors of oth­er sport­ing ad­min­is­tra­tors to fol­low.

There is an in­de­ter­mi­na­cy about sports so suc­cess is not guar­an­teed. There will be con­struc­tive crit­ics and there will be the out­right naysay­ers. The lat­ter is an un­for­tu­nate fea­ture of our cul­ture- crab in bar­rel syn­drome- some bask in fail­ures or short­com­ings of oth­ers. How­ev­er, one can­not fault Lewis and the TTOC for mak­ing a con­cert­ed ef­fort to achieve their goals of #10golds24 Ath­lete Wel­fare and Prepa­ra­tion Fund.

ED­I­TOR'S NOTE: Do­na­tions to #10golds24 Ath­lete Wel­fare and Prepa­ra­tion Fund can be made at any Sco­tia Bank Branch the TTOC Ac­count num­ber is 171188 or by cheque made payable to TTOC which can be dropped off or post­ed to TTOC Olympic House 121 Aber­crom­by Street, Port of Spain, Trinidad.