Lon­don-bound Par­a­lympic ath­letes Car­los Green and Shan­ntol Ince gave emo­tion­al ac­counts of their tri­umphs over phys­i­cal dis­abil­i­ties to be­come out­stand­ing per­form­ers in their re­spec­tive sport­ing dis­ci­plines when they vis­it­ed two schools in Port-of-Spain last week. Shot­put­ter Greene and swim­mer Ince, who have both re­ceived wild cards to the 2012 Par­a­lympic Games, al­so au­to­graphed sig­na­ture copy­books for stu­dents at Good­will In­dus­tries of the West In­dies and the Princess Eliz­a­beth Cen­tre, re­spec­tive­ly. The sport­ing he­roes are part of the ini­tia­tive by en­er­gy com­pa­ny BP Trinidad and To­ba­go (bpTT) to help fu­el the suc­cess of T&T's ath­letes at the up­com­ing Olympic and Par­a­lympic Games.

A re­lease from bpTT stat­ed that Greene, Ince, cy­clist Njisane Phillip, shot­put­ter Cleopa­tra Borel-Brown, sprint­ers Ren­ny Quow and Michelle-Lee Ahye have been se­lect­ed as bpTT ath­lete am­bas­sadors as the coun­try's ath­letes pre­pare for the ul­ti­mate mile­stones of their sport­ing ca­reers. At mid­day, Greene was vir­tu­al­ly mobbed by bpTT staffers when he took part in an in­ter­ac­tive "Lunch & Learn" ses­sion at the com­pa­ny's head of­fice, at Al­bion Court in Port-of-Spain. Greene re­count­ed how he be­came blind dur­ing his teens and the ob­sta­cles he had to over­come along the way. "I have fought very hard to reach where I am to­day. It has hurt but I will nev­er stop fight­ing," he stressed. Since be­ing se­lect­ed for the ho­n­our of be­ing a bpTT ath­lete am­bas­sador, Greene said he had come to "re­al­ly ap­pre­ci­ate" the com­pa­ny's core val­ues of Safe­ty, Courage, One Team, Re­spect and Ex­cel­lence, as he had been prac­tis­ing them in his life as a pro­fes­sion­al ath­lete.

In re­sponse to a ques­tion as to which of the many medals he has won that he val­ued the most, Greene replied, with­out hes­i­ta­tion: "The best medal I ever re­ceived was the one on Au­gust 31, 2010. It is very dear to me." Greene was award­ed the Hum­ming Bird Medal (Sil­ver) on In­de­pen­dence Day, that year. Ear­li­er, at Good­will In­dus­tries, Greene told the stu­dents and teach­ers he con­sid­ered it a great priv­i­lege to vis­it their school and promised to re­turn to work with their ath­letes who par­tic­i­pate in the Spe­cial Olympics.

He urged them to take up sport­ing dis­ci­plines which will put them in line to qual­i­fy for the Par­a­lympic Games. At the Princess Eliz­a­beth Cen­tre, Shan­ntol Ince joined scores of stu­dents in singing I Am Blessed, and urged them to ac­cept their dis­abil­i­ties and to "al­ways be­lieve you are born for some­thing spe­cial." She per­son­al­ly greet­ed and hugged each stu­dent and pre­sent­ed them with au­to­graphed copies of her copy­books.