Sean Nero

Bri­an Lewis, pres­i­dent of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC), has said that af­ter years of tak­ing flak from the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty for in­clud­ing pro­fes­sion­als such as psy­chol­o­gists in of­fi­cial del­e­ga­tions to the Olympic Games, his or­gan­i­sa­tion feels vin­di­cat­ed now that naysay­ers have come around in sup­port of its ini­tial stance.He was speak­ing at yes­ter­day's open­ing of the sec­ond an­nu­al Caribbean Sport Psy­chol­o­gy Con­fer­ence now tak­ing place at the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad on Dock Road in Port-of-Spain, host­ed by the Min­istry of Sport and Sanko-Fa HP (Hy­Pow­er Per­for­mance) Sport and Per­for­mance Psy­chol­o­gy.

Lewis said: "Back in the day, it was the view that tak­ing a psy­chol­o­gist on an Olympic team was a waste of time and re­sources be­cause every­body used to be­lieve that the TTOC was a set of men and women go­ing on trips–free rides. Peo­ple nev­er un­der­stood the im­por­tance of not on­ly a psy­chol­o­gist, but the med­ical team from sports med­i­cine to the gy­nae­col­o­gist. The Olympic Com­mit­tee was in front of the curve and with­stood a lot of crit­i­cism from you the pub­lic and the me­dia for car­ry­ing peo­ple on trips."He added, "It's a re­al plea­sure to see that some years down the road a psy­chol­o­gist of a T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee team is now a must. We live in a so­ci­ety where they tell you once you have to talk to a psy­chol­o­gist you are some kind of weak per­son. We love to say 'suck it up' and 'dig deep.' Those days have long gone!

It was close to 17 years ago, said Lewis, that for­mer TTOC pres­i­dent Dou­glas Ca­ma­cho adopt­ed a holis­tic ap­proach to have the req­ui­site on-site tech­ni­cal sup­port for lo­cal ath­letes when away for com­pe­ti­tion.That con­cept, he said, con­tin­ued when Lar­ry Ro­many head­ed the TTOC and Lewis de­clared that it was a for­mu­la he aimed to fur­ther de­vel­op.While many of the TTOC's de­trac­tors could not en­vis­age the ben­e­fits to be had by the na­tion's sports­men and sports­women, said the TTOC head, those non-be­liev­ers made no ad­verse com­ments when the US Olympic Com­mit­tee, as well as Eng­land and all oth­er ma­jor coun­tries that were se­ri­ous about win­ning medals, did the same."...The TTOC would have en­dured, but we stuck to our guns and with­stood the crit­i­cisms be­cause we were con­vinced we had to cre­ate the en­vi­ron­ment that was nec­es­sary to al­low our ath­letes to suc­ceed. It's not how it used to be long time. There is no ac­ci­dent at the high­er lev­el now.

You have to have every­thing prop­er­ly planned and this would have been high­light­ed in 2012 when we added to the whole prepa­ra­tion pro­gramme, by hav­ing a train­ing camp in Cad­iff, Wales. Again, there were peo­ple who would have com­ment­ed about the ex­pense, but cred­it to the Min­istry of Sport. They un­der­stood the vi­sion of the TTOC and un­der­stand where we need to be tak­ing it, if we need to be se­ri­ous."