Bri­an Lewis

In 2005, dur­ing a Stan­ford grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny speech, Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Ap­ple, told the au­di­ence: "Stay hun­gry. Stay fool­ish." His mes­sage? Don't set­tle, don't be afraid to take risks. Don't be afraid to be dar­ing and am­bi­tious! Stay Hun­gry. Stay Fool­ish.

The con­tem­po­rary world whose pur­chase of choice is the newest smart phone or soft­ware and emerg­ing na­tions with new found spend­ing pow­er are re­defin­ing what sport means.Part of the new at­ti­tude to sport is the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion–a world where it seems you are on­ly as good as your in­ter­net con­nec­tion.

The sheer tal­ent, promise and po­ten­tial of the na­tion's youth and young peo­ple as rep­re­sent­ed by our ath­letes is sim­ply breath­tak­ing but you have to watch and pay close at­ten­tion.In pur­suit of their dream, in striv­ing for ex­cel­lence, our Olympic and Com­mon­wealth ath­letes en­dure pun­ish­ing hours of train­ing and the ar­du­ous task of end­less rep­e­ti­tion.

Of­ten their in­spi­ra­tion, ded­i­ca­tion, re­silience, com­mit­ment and self-dis­ci­pline go un­no­ticed.Through sport, our tal­ent­ed sons and daugh­ters break bound­aries on the glob­al plat­form that is the Olympic, Com­mon­wealth and oth­er mul­ti-sport games.

For us at the Olympic Com­mit­tee, we re­main in­domitable and pas­sion­ate in our be­lief that the goal of the move­ment to use sport to ed­u­cate and serve young peo­ple, is as rel­e­vant to­day as it was 2000 plus years ago.

One thing is cer­tain: When we en­gage chil­dren and young peo­ple and reach out to them to bring them to sport, to show them the pow­er of sport and the Olympic val­ues, we must en­sure that their in­spi­ra­tional role mod­els our ath­letes are at the cen­tre of what we do and why we do what we do.

More­over, it is es­sen­tial that we meet the in­tegri­ty chal­lenge by pro­tect­ing Olympic and Com­mon­wealth sports from the dan­ger­ous threat posed by dop­ing, gam­bling, the cy­cle of cor­rup­tion and poor gov­er­nance.

If we don't face these chal­lenges our right to self-reg­u­late, our au­ton­o­my, le­git­i­ma­cy our stew­ard­ship will be tak­en away from us. To whom much is giv­en much is ex­pect­ed.

There­fore, I pro­pose that the TTOC will con­tin­ue to vig­or­ous­ly pro­mote the adop­tion of good gov­er­nance and ethics across the coun­try's Olympic and Com­mon­wealth Sport move­ment and that we be un­wa­ver­ing and ad­vo­cate and vig­or­ous­ly pro­mote a good gov­er­nance code for sport in T&T and en­sure that af­fil­i­at­ed NSOs align with the Olympic Char­ter and in­clude in their con­sti­tu­tions ba­sic uni­ver­sal prin­ci­ples of good gov­er­nance.

The TTOC must lead from the front in cham­pi­oning for the de­vel­op­ment of a sport in­dus­try. This will re­quire not just lob­by­ing and fin­ger point­ing but the ar­tic­u­la­tion of the con­cep­tu­al frame­work that will in­form the pol­i­cy de­bate.

Our col­lec­tive chal­lenge is to take sport main­stream.Sport is still on the mar­gins of T&T so­ci­ety. The chil­dren, youth and young peo­ple have a lot of dif­fer­ent in­ter­ests that present a threat to ac­tive sport and healthy lifestyles.

The re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to cre­ate and shape a bright sus­tain­able fu­ture for to­mor­row's ath­letes and for sport on the whole falls to our gen­er­a­tion of sport lead­ers, ad­min­is­tra­tors, ath­letes and coach­es. We have to mod­ernise how we mar­ket, pro­mote and brand Olympic and Com­mon­wealth sport and the Olympic and Com­mon­wealth val­ues and ideals to the cur­rent and fu­ture gen­er­a­tion of pub­lic, me­dia and cor­po­rate au­di­ences.

The climb is steep. The hur­dles are high. It is a chal­lenge we must ac­cept. It is a dream we must live and ho­n­our. Fail­ure is not an op­tion. There is no ex­cuse.Let us fear not nor im­pose lim­its on our­selves.

Let us unite un­der the tent of our shared val­ues and vi­sion for sport and arm in arm walk our talk and be the change we want to see in do­ing so let us ac­cept the ad­vice of the late Steve Jobs and Stay hun­gry, Stay fool­ish.

Ed­i­tor's note: Bri­an Lewis is the pres­i­dent of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee. To­day's col­umn is an ex­cerpt from his pre­sen­ta­tion at the 2014 TTOC an­nu­al awards func­tion which was held last night