An­dre Bap­tiste

The World Cham­pi­onships in Moscow has again high­light­ed the need to sup­port our ath­letes if we want them to suc­ceed.Sup­port though must be fair, hon­est and trans­par­ent and not filled with typ­i­cal favouritism, where friend­ship and par­ti­san is giv­en pri­or­i­ty over suc­cess and qual­i­ty.These con­tin­ue to be symp­toms that I have ob­served both at the 2012 Lon­don Olympics and the cur­rent World Cham­pi­onships.Our ath­letes be­lieve that their cries are be­ing ig­nored in terms of fi­nan­cial sup­port, based on the ex­ist­ing flawed sys­tem of elite fund­ing.If one was to con­duct a sur­vey among those in au­thor­i­ty in the Min­istry of Sports and the Sports Com­pa­ny on the sys­tem for fund­ing, there would be dif­fer­ent ex­pla­na­tions, some com­pli­cat­ed, oth­ers just con­fus­ing.

In speak­ing with sev­er­al Ja­maican jour­nal­ists at these Games, it was amaz­ing to lis­ten to the pas­sion and team­work they each seem to be­lieve in. In Ja­maica, when a ques­tion is raised on an ath­lete, it is dealt with ex­pe­di­tious­ly I am told and to the sat­is­fac­tion of the ath­lete.

Ja­maica, it would ap­pear, un­der­stands the val­ue of sports, where­as in T&T we un­der­stand and pay homage to the val­ue of mon­ey more than sport.When you lis­ten to the hor­ror sto­ries told by ath­letes who bring pride and joy to this coun­try, it makes you wary and sad of the state of ad­min­is­tra­tion of sports. But who can the ath­letes turn to...you...me...or just them­selves?To be suc­cess­ful is not on­ly about abil­i­ty, it is al­so about be­ing able to en­sure the cor­rect things are done, from train­ing, to di­et and oth­er phys­i­cal and health re­lat­ed is­sues.It is when we as a peo­ple, all of us ig­nore these is­sues, that we leave the ath­lete vul­ner­a­ble to the many evils that ex­ist be­cause of the stench of fast mon­ey and a fast life.In that re­gard, we all need to be our broth­er's keep­er in en­sur­ing the safe­ty and wel­fare of our ath­letes, even if we do not like their moth­er, their fa­ther, their un­cle or their aunt for one ab­surd rea­son or an­oth­er.

The lat­est in­ci­dents of ath­letes in Ja­maica and T&T be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed for drug en­hance­ment can­not be tol­er­at­ed. We must en­sue that all ath­letes are made aware of the strictest guide­lines.

There is a fear that the rest of the world is on­ly too ea­ger to point fin­gers at our ath­letes be­cause of the grow­ing suc­cess and when you add a phe­nom­e­non like Us­ain Bolt win­ning all be­fore them, you are guar­an­tee a lot of at­ten­tion.To his cred­it, Bolt has not com­plained. He un­der­stands the pow­er of mar­ket­ing and pro­mo­tion.Re­cent­ly one of the T&T of­fi­cials ex­pressed the view that there is grow­ing po­ten­tial of young­sters in this coun­try, each with dif­fer­ent skill sets and up­bring­ing, but to en­sure they have the ide­al ath­letes life, they will need fund­ing and men­tor­ing.In most cas­es, nei­ther ex­ist and the on­ly way for an ath­lete to suc­ceed is to leave our shores and head to the Unit­ed States where he or she will be­come a slave to the re­spec­tive uni­ver­si­ties and their coach­es.

We do not of­fer our young­sters enough of an op­por­tu­ni­ty to study at UWI.

At the mo­ment 400 me­tres hur­dler, Je­hue Gor­don, is the on­ly one in Moscow who is stay­ing and train­ing lo­cal­ly and there is lit­tle doubt that it is pro­gress­ing in a time­ly and ef­fi­cient man­ner.

There needs to be more pub­lic­i­ty on the suc­cess of Gor­don while he is study­ing and train­ing un­der the watch­ful, car­ing and parental eyes of his two coach­es–Ed­win Skin­ner and Dr Ian Hy­po­lite.

If this is made pub­lic, there is a strong pos­si­bil­i­ty that we could stop los­ing our top ath­letes to over­seas uni­ver­si­ties with over­seas temp­ta­tions and coach­es/man­agers with no loy­al­ty oth­er than to the mighty US$.We must not al­low what I have wit­nessed at these cham­pi­onships to con­tin­ue where per­sons who love their coun­try and love rep­re­sent­ing and giv­ing their heart and soul for T&T are treat­ed like sec­ond class cit­i­zens be­cause they ei­ther know no­body or know some­body who is dis­liked by the ad­min­is­tra­tors in charge of fund­ing.When this hap­pens, the ath­letes and their par­ents lose faith in the sys­tem, and be­gin to ques­tion whether the sac­ri­fice that is be­ing made by child and par­ent is hon­est­ly worth the ef­fort.