Sean Nero

While shot put­ter Cleopa­tra Borel is grate­ful for be­ing the re­cip­i­ent of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee's Sports­woman of the Year ho­n­our for the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year, she wants to use her star pow­er to tack­le obe­si­ty lo­cal­ly.Speak­ing to the T&T Guardian at the post awards cer­e­mo­ny held at The­atre 1 at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) on Fred­er­ick Street in Port-of-Spain on Mon­day, she said, "Your ques­tion ac­tu­al­ly speaks to one of my pas­sions. I have a Mas­ters (de­gree) in health pro­mo­tions. Obe­si­ty is one of the lead­ing caus­es of death across the globe. Go­ing af­ter kids... go­ing af­ter young peo­ple... get­ting peo­ple in­volved in sport�not just com­pet­i­tive­ly�but to teach an ac­tive lifestyle...to teach healthy liv­ing...to teach a holis­tic way of liv­ing not just work and burn­ing your­self out."

Borel added, "I be­lieve if we bring in the young peo­ple�the young kids�then the fam­i­lies will get in­volved, be­cause kids don't do any­thing with­out their par­ents in­volved and then we have a move­ment where we val­ue our health in T&T. Sin­cere­ly that's the most im­por­tant thing that we have: be­ing healthy and en­joy­ing life. We live on a beau­ti­ful is­land. There is no ex­cuse not to go out­side."She be­lieved that the resur­gence of com­mu­ni­ty games es­pe­cial­ly in rur­al ar­eas was vi­tal to fight­ing the obe­si­ty scourge, while de­vel­op­ing ath­letes.Borel said she was proof of a top ath­lete from the rur­al com­mu­ni­ty of Ma­yaro."Many times the op­por­tu­ni­ties that I had to com­pete against in­di­vid­u­als–to see how good I was up against kids my age–came at com­mu­ni­ty sports...em­ploy­ee sport pro­grammes from my dad's work­place from run­ning the egg and spoon race to sack race. These are all re­al­ly im­por­tant to me. We have to go back to ba­sics now, es­pe­cial­ly in this tech­no­log­i­cal age.

Ithink it's a re­al­ly good idea to have com­mu­ni­ty games. Build up to the games and have a com­mu­ni­ty cham­pi­onship! Make it ex­cit­ing!" she said.Borel added, "We have to bring peo­ple back out­doors. We are not out­doors as we used to be, which leads to a seden­tary lifestyle. We live on an is­land. It's sun­ny all year round. There is no rea­son why we can­not have a com­mu­ni­ty beach vol­ley­ball tour­na­ment. Bring the peo­ple out to play."Field­ing ques­tions on the role she be­lieved spon­sors could play in sus­tain­ing com­mu­ni­ty sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties, she ex­pressed op­ti­mism that com­pa­nies were will­ing to give back to this coun­try."This is a great av­enue where we can re­al­ly see what the young peo­ple are made of and it's a great place to es­tab­lish your brand, es­tab­lish your prod­uct and loy­al­ty to your brand. I think at the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el, it's re­al­ly where things hap­pen in T&T; in small vil­lages across the is­land," she said.

On the is­sue of women in sport and spi­ralling crime, Borel said, "I think that we have to em­pow­er women. Sport em­pow­ers women all the time. It's a great way for us to teach our sis­ters how to stand up to the stress­es of life here in T&T and just to do well, do bet­ter. Per­haps our crime so­lu­tions need to be led by women."Com­ment­ing on the dis­ci­pline need­ed to sus­tain suc­cess, she said, "The work that went in train­ing was un­be­liev­ably pun­ish­ing. It is un­be­liev­able how much ath­letes have to go through and how much we do to per­form well, while rep­re­sent­ing T&T. It's nice to be recog­nised."