Asha De Fre­itas-Mose­ley

I re­cent­ly had yet an­oth­er dis­cus­sion about the rea­son­ing and/or ne­ces­si­ty to re­ward our 2012 Olympic gold medal­ist and fig­ured that per­haps some in­sight is need­ed to help bal­ance some of the some­what one-sided per­spec­tives that ex­ist with re­gard to sport in this coun­try. Some find it un­nec­es­sary, oth­ers find it a waste of our re­sources, to re­ward our Olympic he­roes. How­ev­er I dis­agree with this opin­ion com­plete­ly. While there are a great many forms of en­ter­tain­ment in to­day's world, the his­tor­i­cal great­ness and spir­it of The Olympics should not be un­der­es­ti­mat­ed. The re­wards that our ath­letes re­ceive, is quite in keep­ing with the tra­di­tion­al pres­ence of The Olympic Games. These Lon­don Olympic medals were the largest medals of any Sum­mer Olympics Games in his­to­ry, weigh­ing 400g of ster­ling sil­ver and cop­per, with 6g of 24 karat gold plat­ing. The medal, to­day, is worth $624. Some ask the ques­tion of ex­ces­sive­ness but what part of the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try, whether it be the movie-mak­ing busi­ness, mu­sic, or sports, does not all ex­ist in a world of ex­ces­sive­ness?

How­ev­er, stick­ing to this top­ic of re­ward­ing Olympic He­roes, did you know, for the 2012 Lon­don Olympics:

Sin­ga­pore award­ed $800,000 to gold medal­ists.

Geor­gia award­ed $706,000 (gold medal­ists).

The Unit­ed States Olympics Com­mit­tee award­ed $25,000 for win­ning the gold medal, $15,000 for the sil­ver medal, $10,000 for the bronze.

Ghana award­ed $20,000 (gold medal­ists).

In the days of An­cient Greece, as is the case to­day, cash prizes were not award­ed to Olympic ath­letes as part of the tour­na­ment, how­ev­er, it was up­on re­turn home where their gifts of fame and for­tune await­ed. In Greece, tax ex­emp­tions, mon­ey, front-row seats to the the­atre (perks af­ford­ed to per­son­al­i­ties and po­si­tions of note) and life­time free meals in their civic build­ing were award­ed their Olympic win­ners. What we af­ford­ed our Lon­don Olympic gold medal­ist, Keshorn Wal­cott, was along these same lines.

Our lat­est gold medal Olympian, the first in 36 years, and first ever from the west­ern hemi­sphere in this par­tic­u­lar event, was award­ed $1,000,000, 20,000 square feet of land in his home­town area, To­co, a lux­u­ry home, a Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion project al­so to be done in To­co and the nam­ing of a light­house and Caribbean Air­lines plane af­ter him. He was al­so award­ed and ac­cept­ed a schol­ar­ship to the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T which would make it ap­pear that we are tak­ing steps to­wards re­al­is­ing the goal of home grow­ing our own elite ath­letes, as has been hap­pen­ing in Ja­maica for a long time now, rather than re­ly­ing on the train­ing of oth­er na­tions to re­alise the po­ten­tial of our own ath­letes. The two re­lay team bronze-medal­ists were award­ed $300,000 each. Per­haps hind­sight is al­ways 20/20 but in 2012, George Bovell III was fi­nal­ly ho­n­oured for his 2004 bronze medal Olympic per­for­mance with $300,000 and the re­vival of the promise to build a Na­tion­al Aquat­ic Cen­tre in his name. Aside from our Olympic medal­ists, di­rect cash re­wards were not giv­en. Rather, the re­main­ing Olympic rep­re­sen­ta­tives re­ceived medals of Hon­or.

In com­par­i­son, in a re­port done on CVM TV, a Ja­maican tele­vi­sion net­work stat­ed that mil­lions of dol­lars will be award­ed to the Ja­maican Olympians by their gov­ern­ment. Gold medal­ists will re­ceive US$10,000, sil­ver medal­ists to re­ceive US$6,000 and the bronze medal­ists will re­ceive US$4,500. Al­so stat­ed was that oth­er pay­ments will be made to Olympic fi­nal­ists, all the way to the sev­enth place fi­nal­ist, while every Ja­maican ath­lete who made the team to rep­re­sent their coun­try, will each re­ceive a pay­ment of US$2,000. So, my point is, the val­ue of our Olympic ath­letes, in our so­ci­ety must be care­ful­ly placed. Cur­rent­ly, there are no stan­dards for the recog­ni­tion of our Olympic ath­letes; how­ev­er, the last few weeks cer­tain­ly im­ply that we may see the de­vel­op­ment of one in the not-too-dis­tant fu­ture. I cer­tain­ly hope there will be one. There is al­ways a greater sense of con­trol and ob­jec­tiv­i­ty when things are done in a pro-ac­tive, struc­tured fash­ion. The more struc­tures there are the more path­ways we will be cre­at­ing for our young­sters and the way they per­ceive their fu­ture.

Asha De Fre­itas-Mose­ley (ATC, BS, MS) is a cer­ti­fied ath­let­ic train­er with the Na­tion­al Ath­let­ic Train­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion of the USA. Ath­let­ic train­ing is prac­ticed by ath­let­ic train­ers, health care pro­fes­sion­als who col­lab­o­rate with physi­cians to op­ti­mize ac­tiv­i­ty and par­tic­i­pa­tion of pa­tients and clients.

Ath­let­ic train­ing en­com­pass­es the pre­ven­tion, di­ag­no­sis, and in­ter­ven­tion of emer­gency, acute, and chron­ic med­ical con­di­tions in­volv­ing im­pair­ment, func­tion­al lim­i­ta­tions, and dis­abil­i­ties (www.na­ta.org).