Sean Nero

Sports Min­is­ter Anil Roberts is telling the na­tion's youth not to al­low the lega­cies of the late sprint­er Emanuel Mc Don­ald Bai­ley and weight-lifter Rod­ney Wilkes to fade in­to the abyss.

Speak­ing at yes­ter­day's close of the 15th an­nu­al Sport Desk Lead­er­ship Sym­po­sium held at the Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre in St Ann's Port-of-Spain, Roberts said both Olympic medal­lists epit­o­mised why giv­ing up was nev­er an op­tion.

Bai­ley passed away last De­cem­ber. The sports fra­ter­ni­ty bid Wilkes farewell back in March.

Roberts said dur­ing their life­time both men had the ho­n­our to rep­re­sent T&T, but it was not un­der the best cir­cum­stances. Yet, they per­se­vered!

From that, the min­is­ter said, were lessons the na­tion could learn.

"Rod­ney Wilkes won the first ever Olympic medal for T&T in 1948; a sil­ver medal to the Egyp­tians. Now if Rod­ney Wilkes was to tell me, 'boy, that seems im­pos­si­ble,' I could be­lieve Rod­ney Wilkes, be­cause Rod­ney Wilkes had to go on a boat to the Olympics. It took about 13 days. Right now our ath­letes go by the min­is­ter for first class and busi­ness class tick­ets, jump on a plane, stretch out, lie down (and) sleep, wake-up, show their pass­port and they reach in the (Olympic) vil­lage. Rod­ney Wilkes had to go on a boat with no re­al coach. Alex Chap­man (Alexan­der B Chap­man) who was now learn­ing a lit­tle bit about weight lift­ing, he is the coach. He (Wilkes) had to go and find things on the boat to lift to keep his anaer­o­bic ca­pac­i­ty up. When he reached there he didn't have a psy­chol­o­gist, doc­tor, mas­sage ther­a­pist, psy­chio-ther­a­pist, no yo­ga in­struc­tor, but he had to com­pete against the world," Roberts said.

He added, "Mc Don­ald Bai­ley want­ed to run for T&T, but the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee back then was not as ef­fi­cient as it is now un­der the lead­er­ship of Bri­an Lewis. Mc Don­ald Bai­ley was wait­ing in Eng­land. He didn't even know if T&T was send­ing a team. He didn't pick up his cell phone and call the TTOC pres­i­dent. He had to wait for a big boy to make a call to find out if we were send­ing a team; all of this on his mind while he's train­ing. Right now ath­letes don't have to wor­ry about that. They know if they are go­ing," he said.

"At the last minute when he (Bai­ley) re­alised T&T not go­ing and he had to make a choice to run for Great Britain. Now he had to run for the em­pire which was not treat­ing him like an em­per­or be­cause back in those days every­body was not con­sid­ered equal. Some peo­ple were con­sid­ered less than oth­ers, so they weren't giv­en the same op­por­tu­ni­ties.

"Yet Mc Don­ald Bai­ley went in­to that sys­tem and won a medal (Helsin­ki Olympics 1952) and still feels proud that he is from T&T and ba­si­cal­ly gave us that ti­tle." Roberts told an es­ti­mat­ed 400 teenagers that in T&T to­day, noth­ing was im­pos­si­ble. And that the word had no mean­ing cit­ing the enor­mous op­por­tu­ni­ties to do any­thing they want­ed.

Roberts ap­plaud­ed the gen­uine in­ter­est of the chil­dren and ed­u­ca­tors in the Sport Desk four-day men­tor­ship pro­gramme which this year fea­tured pre­sen­ta­tions from for­mer West In­dies and in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et am­bas­sador Court­ney Walsh, Olympic medal­list George Bovell III and Ato Boldon, Miss Uni­verse 1998 Wendy Fitzwilliam, UCI World Cup medal­list Njisane Phillip, for­mer T&T crick­et cap­tain am­bas­sador Daren Gan­ga, World Youth swim­ming cham­pi­on Shan­ntol Ince.

Ath­letes have no rea­sons to fail cit­ing that they not on­ly have the sup­port of the Min­istry of Sport and the Sport Com­pa­ny, but en­er­gy com­pa­ny At­lantic too, fa­cil­i­tat­ing the growth and tal­ent of the na­tion's sport­ing fra­ter­ni­ty," Robert said.

He con­tin­ued, "Last year, we ed­u­cat­ed 300 coach­es in dif­fer­ent sports. We have Chi­nese coach­es com­ing here for syn­chro­nised swim­ming and div­ing, with bad­minton, with gym­nas­tics. We have coach­es for hur­dles, for box­ing and track and field (and) for weight lift­ing. So you'll have no ex­cuse. Any­thing and every­thing is there. I got an op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­ter­view Rod­ney Wilkes for two hours. He used to train in the cane field. He used to lift up sacks of rice, sacks of wheat.

"He didn't re­al­ly have dif­fer­ent gyms. George Bovell III needs about five dif­fer­ent gyms. Now he (Bovell III) is do­ing gym­nas­tics. Rod­ney Wilkes didn't have all that. If he told me it was im­pos­si­ble, I would have said yes Rod­ney," he said.

"If you tell me the same thing, I'll tell you no way. The on­ly thing block­ing us here now, with the op­por­tu­ni­ties that we have right here is our mind."