Sean Nero

Lo­cal-born for­eign-based cy­cling sen­sa­tion Njisane Phillip had lost faith in this coun­try's prepa­ra­tion for the Lon­don 2012 Olympic Games and was close to re­turn­ing to the Unit­ed States in hope of seek­ing a spot on a ri­val team.

That would have been the case, how­ev­er, had mul­ti­ple Olympic medal­list Ato Boldon not learnt of his frus­tra­tions, sat him (Phillip) down for a heart-to-heart and con­vinced Phillip that fly­ing the na­tion­al colours of T&T was the best move he could ever make.

This was re­vealed at The Sport Desk Sec­ondary School sport sym­po­sium ti­tled No Pain, No Gain, held at the Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre in St Ann's, Port-of-Spain, ear­li­er this week, when Phillip re­spond­ed to a ques­tion from the au­di­ence on the best ad­vice he ever got.

Phillip said, "I had a big sit­u­a­tion be­fore the Olympics. I was very frus­trat­ed with the plan­ning and the or­gan­i­sa­tion (in T&T). We sat down and we had a con­ver­sa­tion about me switch­ing to the US (cy­cling team). I live in the US and I train with the US na­tion­al team.

"He (Ato) said I should stay, even though it's tough. He said, 'Your peo­ple are go­ing to love you for­ev­er'. That re­al­ly stuck in my heart. I lis­tened to him, be­cause I'm here to­day. That was the best ad­vice I ever got."

Now more than ever, he is fo­cused on do­ing his part to de­vel­op cy­cling in T&T, hav­ing de­clared that the fu­ture of the sport in this coun­try was bright. Phillip de­scribed the tal­ent in T&T as "tremen­dous," start­ing with the BMX bi­cy­cle com­peti­tors up to the ju­niors.

"Right now, we have about three ju­niors who are su­per good. They came off from Pan Am last year. They were able to get that first gold medal at the Pan Am Cham­pi­onships. We have a lot of tal­ent.

"What hap­pens with cy­cling is that a lot of peo­ple get turned off by the age of 18, be­cause like I said, it's a very ex­pen­sive sport. For fam­i­lies to sup­port a child with the best equip­ment for cy­cling is re­al­ly, re­al­ly hard. I think now, the Gov­ern­ment is try­ing to sup­port cy­cling a lot more. Hope­ful­ly we can get deals and get bikes spon­sored."

The in­ter­ac­tive ques­tion-and-an­swer seg­ment be­tween Phillip and his teen fans was re­veal­ing.

When asked to re­live the mo­ments in his fi­nal race in his quest of win­ning an Olympic bronze medal in the men's sprint event, he said, "Be­fore that fi­nal race at the Olympics, I was hum­ming the sweet so­ca mu­sic. I was lis­ten­ing to the beat, the lyrics, think­ing about Car­ni­val...jam­ming up.

"In the last race I messed up. I start­ed to think about the medal and I stopped hav­ing fun. All the oth­er times I was hav­ing fun. That mis­take won't hap­pen again."

If Phillip had the pow­er to change things in this coun­try's sport­ing fra­ter­ni­ty, ath­letes would be quite a hap­py bunch, as he would en­sure that all recog­nised dis­ci­plines be brought on par with track and field.

"Nor­mal­ly, when we go to the Olympics all we hear about is track and field. We have sta­di­ums every­where. I think track and field is ful­ly de­vel­oped–I'm sure there are parts that are miss­ing–but I would try to boast all the oth­er sports to try and gain high­er con­tention at all the oth­er games in the world."

If Phillip thought his role at the sym­po­sium was sim­ply to share his life sto­ry as an ath­lete, field as cou­ple ques­tions and re­tire, he was wrong.

Teens in at­ten­dance had lots of ques­tions and Phillip, in their eyes, seemed the most qual­i­fied to an­swer since he was a mem­ber of that age group al­most four years ago.

From ex­pe­ri­ence, he said, pro­cras­ti­nat­ing will on­ly make liv­ing life more com­pli­cat­ed than it need­ed to be. In his view, teens don't usu­al­ly fo­cus on their goals and this he said was a prac­tice that need­ed to change. He urged them to start think­ing about their fu­tures and not just fo­cus on the present.