Bri­an Lewis

It's im­por­tant to treat peo­ple well, to have faith in them.

The lit­tle things that can make a dif­fer­ence don't al­ways re­ceive the at­ten­tion they de­serve.

We let things slide. They ap­pear triv­ial to those on the out­side but they are im­por­tant when build­ing an en­vi­ron­ment that will fa­cil­i­tate suc­cess.

Lit­tle things such as re­spect.

In any or­gan­i­sa­tion, group, sec­tor, club or team, you have to have strong val­ues and be­liefs. They must be col­lec­tive, col­lab­o­ra­tive and sup­port­ive. Every­one in the group must feel re­spect­ed.

I am not talk­ing about in­di­vid­u­als; I am talk­ing about let­ting things slide as a whole.

Some­times it can slip with­out you notic­ing and on­ly be­comes clear when it has all gone wrong.

Were we hon­est enough? Did we ad­dress the prob­lems?

The num­ber of hours peo­ple put in to make sport work, every­body mat­ters. They should be made to feel that their needs, con­cerns and is­sues mat­ter.

Be­fore we be­gin to talk about pro­vid­ing our elite ath­letes with the tools that they need to climb the podi­um, there are ba­sic is­sues that can't be ig­nored. Noth­ing must be left to chance. The dif­fer­ence be­tween win­ning and los­ing is a fine line. But is that what it's all about? Win­ning and

los­ing?

For many, ex­cel­lence and dis­cus­sion about ex­cel­lence in sport gives the im­pres­sion that elite sport and medals are the be all and end all of sport.

Sport isn't on­ly about be­ing a cham­pi­on.

Par­tic­i­pat­ing for the sheer love and joy must re­main at the very core of sport.

Even pro­fes­sion­al sports­men and women, for whom it's a ca­reer, can't lose the joy and pas­sion. The mo­ment that hap­pens, the dip in per­for­mance be­comes no­tice­able.

Achiev­ing ex­cel­lence is near im­pos­si­ble if pas­sion and en­thu­si­asm is lost.

It's im­por­tant that in our quest to pro­vide our sports­men and women with the tools to pro­vide them with the best train­ing pro­grammes and prepa­ra­tion, we keep in mind that the love and pas­sion must not be sac­ri­ficed.

At times coach­es, train­ers, man­agers and ad­min­is­tra­tors can be ac­cused of over think­ing and over an­a­lyz­ing. Their de­meanour and at­ti­tude can give the im­pres­sion that sport is no longer about play and fun.

Some­where along the line in our de­ter­mi­na­tion to be the best, to use sport to make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence and to de­vel­op a sport in­dus­try, we may be los­ing sight of the fact that sport is play and fun.

The TTOC re­cent­ly con­duct­ed re­search and the in­for­ma­tion on reg­is­tered par­tic­i­pants is not the kind that makes for a pret­ty pic­ture. Un­der 35s are not par­tic­i­pat­ing in or­gan­ised sports as they should.

It's ob­vi­ous that the love af­fair be­tween T&T youths and sport is bro­ken. Are par­tic­i­pa­tion rates in or­gan­ised sports at its low­est lev­el in the his­to­ry of T&T sport?

We must not take the fun out of sport.

Those who wish to par­tic­i­pate in sport for the sheer en­joy­ment of it must feel that they are more than wel­comed and that sport is not an elite on­ly club.

Bri­an Lewis is the Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Olympic Com­mit­tee www.ttoc.org.The views ex­pressed are not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of the TTOC.