Sean Nero

Ath­letes cho­sen to rep­re­sent this coun­try at this year's XX Com­mon­wealth Games tak­ing place in Glas­gow, Scot­land, from Ju­ly 23-Au­gust 3, are bet­ter equipped to de­liv­er medal win­ning per­for­mances.That is the view of Bri­an Lewis, pres­i­dent of the T&T Com­mon­wealth Games Com­mit­tee (TTC­GA)/T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee.Un­der the Com­mon­wealth Games Fed­er­a­tion, chap­ter or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tees must car­ry the CGA call sign.So for the du­ra­tion of this tour­na­ment the TTOC name will be silent. With 43 days to go be­fore the Games her­ald, Lewis said the lo­cal con­tin­gent, which was re­put­ed to be the coun­try's largest in the his­to­ry of the cham­pi­onships, would aim to bet­ter the medal haul of nine, way back in 1966. They were: five gold, two-sil­ver and two-bronze.

This coun­try's ath­letes will be vy­ing for top ho­n­ours in in­di­vid­ual sports as: aquat­ics, box­ing, cy­cling, gym­nas­tics, ju­do, shoot­ing, squash, ta­ble ten­nis, triathlon as well as track and field.

Net­ball, hock­ey and the rug­by 7s are the team sports in which T&T will be go­ing for gold. With an es­ti­mat­ed bud­get of close to $4 mil­lion, Lewis said, one of the chal­lenges for team T&T's was that re­sources were not fi­nite and there­fore there would al­ways be sit­u­a­tions ac­cess to more.The Sports Min­istry has al­ready put sys­tems in place for ath­letes and of­fi­cials to trav­el to and from Scot­land, while the Sport Com­pa­ny was con­tribut­ing by mak­ing the elite ath­letes fa­cil­i­ties at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Na­tion­al Sta­di­um and its per­son­nel avail­able for these prepa­ra­tions. Through the TTC­GA's part­ner­ship with Adi­das the cost of out­fit­ting the lo­cal team had been re­duced.Mean­while, the na­tion­al sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion would use their re­sources to cov­er the re­main­der of the bill.

Jus­ti­fy­ing our sport­ing val­ue

"I am not one of those who be­lieve that cor­po­rate T&T has any oblig­a­tion. I think that it is up to the na­tion­al sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions and the TTOC to jus­ti­fy to cor­po­rate T&T, what is the val­ue that it brings to the re­la­tion­ship. "This thing where you want to bul­ly cor­po­rate T&T, that they have to do some­thing, I don't see it that way. I think that the re­al­i­ty is, it is not about a hand-out. It is not about a de­pen­den­cy syn­drome. It is about a part­ner­ship. I think once NSOs are able to iden­ti­fy what is the val­ue they bring, jus­ti­fy it and de­liv­er on their promis­es, I think that in­creas­ing­ly, over time, you would see a ma­jor trans­for­ma­tion in the re­sponse," Lewis said.He added: "All over the world, suc­cess dri­ves suc­cess. That is why it is im­por­tant for the TTC­GA (TTOC) and the NSO and ath­letes and coach­es that when we go in­to ma­jor events that we go to these games to per­form, not just par­tic­i­pate."T&T has passed the stage of just be­ing hap­py to bare­ly qual­i­fy for and event. It's not about go­ing to the games for a joy ride or a va­ca­tion."Arrange­ments have been put in place for pre-Games train­ing camp for ath­letes as­so­ci­at­ed with team sports in Scot­land. They are sched­uled to de­part lo­cal shores be­tween Ju­ly 6-8. The chal­lenges, he said, would be to beat the re­sults of Lon­don 2012 (Olympics) cit­ing it had be­come the new bench­mark.

Train­ing camps for team sports

Point­ing to last month's stag­ing of the IAAF World Re­lays held in Nas­sau, Ba­hamas, where T&T bagged three medals: men's 4 by 100m (sil­ver), women's 4 by 100m (bronze) and men's 4 by 400m (bronze), Lewis said: "They did ex­cel­lent. That's cause for en­cour­age­ment. In sports, you don't event go in­to a tour­na­ment or cham­pi­onship ex­pect­ing to fail­ure."I am op­ti­mistic that our ath­letes will do very well. From my per­spec­tive I would think track and field, cy­cling, swim­ming and box­ing will be where we would have podi­um suc­cess. I am very in­ter­est­ed in see­ing how we do in gym­nas­tics."Net­ball as one of the team sports, we would think on pa­per have a chance, but the re­cent form does not sug­gest that net­ball would medal. Hock­ey�men's and women's�the best teams in the world are from the Com­mon­wealth na­tions. So hock­ey would have some great dif­fi­cul­ty get­ting on the podi­um, but what we would ex­pect is that they im­prove on their per­for­mances from 2006 and 2010. You want to see the team sports a lot more com­pet­i­tive than they have been. I know they have pre­pared well."

He added, "They are all ac­cess­ing the high-per­for­mance unit in the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um. They are do­ing ex­treme­ly well. They may have want­ed a lit­tle bit more warm-up games. But we are hav­ing train­ing camps for the team sports. We are fo­cused as a Com­mon­wealth Games As­so­ci­a­tion, tak­ing it to the next lev­el. Our part­ner­ship with the Michael John­son Per­for­mance Cen­tre and BPTT plays an im­por­tant role in terms of the high per­for­mance train­ing try­ing to sup­ple­ment and com­ple­ment the train­ing pro­grammes the var­i­ous coach­es have with var­i­ous ath­letes. It's all about work­ing with as a team."