Sean Nero

"I am not look­ing to the usu­al and tra­di­tion­al medal sus­pects for suc­cess at this games, but from oth­ers who will grasp this op­por­tu­ni­ty to be suc­cess­ful and make T&T proud," said Bri­an Lewis, pres­i­dent of the T&T Com­mon­wealth Games Com­mit­tee. The 2014 Com­mon­wealth Games be­gins in Glas­gow, Scot­land, on Wednes­day.Lewis said ath­letes in all dis­ci­plines must per­form at lev­els that would boost na­tion­al fer­vour, while pro­vid­ing cit­i­zens with ev­i­dence that T&T have grown as a tru­ly dy­nam­ic sport­ing na­tion.

Team sports would face the biggest hur­dles in pur­suit of win­ning medals, but in­di­vid­ual ath­letes out­side of track and field, swim­ming, cy­cling and box­ing could pro­duce new cham­pi­ons for the na­tion. Ju­do, gym­nas­tics, ta­ble ten­nis, squash and triathlon were ready to evolve from be­ing con­sid­ered mi­nor sports lo­cal­ly, to be­com­ing ma­jor dis­ci­plines, with con­sis­tent achiev­ers on the glob­al sport­ing stage.Christo­pher George was the lone ath­lete for ju­do, while Maris­sa Dick, Khazia His­lop and William Al­bert were rep­re­sent­ing gym­nas­tics.Like George, David Cot­tle was a one-man team in triathlon, while ta­ble ten­nis vet­er­an Dex­ter St Louis leads a group that in­cludes Cur­tis Humphreys, Aaron Wil­son, Yu­vraj Dookram, Rheann Chung, Ash­ley Quashie, Aleena Ed­wards and Cather­ine Spicer.

Col­in Ra­mas­ra, Kale Wil­son, Ker­rie Sam­ple and Char­lotte Knag­gs were rep­re­sent­ing squash. "It is time for ju­do to rise. For the first time at Com­mon­wealth Games we have an ath­lete for ju­do.

"He is Christo­pher George, who is no stranger to na­tion­al du­ty hav­ing rep­re­sent­ed T&T at the ju­nior and se­nior lev­els in the sport of wa­ter po­lo."He has made the switch to the sport of ju­do and his ob­jec­tives and goals are to qual­i­fy for Rio 2016 (Olympic Games) which would be a first for ju­do."Most of the at­ten­tion, un­der­stand­ably, in the con­text of our medal hope­fuls are in track and field, swim­ming cy­cling and box­ing�Michael Alexan­der and Aaron Prince�out­side of the team sports, which will be fac­ing some tough hur­dle."The Com­mon­wealth Games, as much as it is good games in its own right, forms a key part to the jour­ney to Rio 2016.

"Re­al­is­ti­cal­ly, we will be pay­ing close at­ten­tion to new­com­ers to see how they com­pete with the high­er lev­el of com­pe­ti­tion, out­side of the Caribbean."In No­vem­ber, we have the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) games where we would ex­pect the team sports to have def­i­nite medal po­ten­tial."What we would want to see in Scot­land is a very com­pet­i­tive ef­fort and signs of sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment in terms of fit­ness and tar­get pro­jec­tion, as well look to CAC and Pan Amer­i­can Games and the Rio."So I am say­ing that the sports such as ju­do, which we have not been rep­re­sent­ed in at the con­ti­nen­tal lev­el un­der the Olympic Com­mit­tee, we will be pay­ing close at­ten­tion to them. It would be very in­ter­est­ing to see how George comes along."