An­drew Gioan­net­ti

Bri­an Lewis, pres­i­dent of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) says there may have nev­er been a bet­ter time and op­por­tu­ni­ty for the pub­lic to do its part in sup­port­ing the TTOC's quest for ten or more Olympic gold medals by 2024, than by sup­port­ing the part­ner­ship be­tween the lo­cal Olympic body and the Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board (NL­CB).

Lewis made this case yes­ter­day when the TTOC and the NL­CB an­nounced an in­def­i­nite arrange­ment, which sees Olympic hope­ful ath­letes ben­e­fit from part mon­e­tary pro­ceeds earned from a new "in­stant win" scratch card launched by the NL­CB ti­tled: "Go­ing for Gold".

NL­CB's part of the bar­gain is specif­i­cal­ly to aid the TTOC in achiev­ing its goal of se­cur­ing ten or more gold medals by 2024 by cred­it­ing an ac­count cre­at­ed for the ath­letes with some of the mon­ey earned from the scratch cards.

The new game will be­come avail­able to the pub­lic on Mon­day. They cost $10 each. The $3.2 mil­lion in prizes range from $10 to $100,000 in­di­vid­u­al­ly. Ac­cord­ing to the NL­CB, the odds of win­ning is one in four.

Thus far, the NL­CB has print­ed 500,000 scratch cards and will con­tin­ue to print new cards de­pend­ing on the rate of sales. Rep­re­sent­ed by board mem­ber Bri­an Sawh and lot­tery tick­et su­per­vi­sor, Can­dy West, at yes­ter­day's func­tion, the NL­CB an­nounced that the ath­letes' fund will re­ceive $200,000-$250,000 for every 500,000 cards sold.

Sawh said he be­lieves the first batch of half-a-mil­lion cards can be sold with­in a month but that the con­tin­u­a­tion of the new scratch card will de­pend on its de­mand. Thus for the ben­e­fit of the ath­letes and the NL­CB, the com­pa­ny will take an ag­gres­sive mar­ket­ing ap­proach, through print, ra­dio and dig­i­tal ad­ver­tis­ing to raise the pub­lic aware­ness.

Mean­while, Lewis, who sought to put the arrange­ment "in­to con­text" said, "One can't do some­thing over and over and ex­pect a dif­fer­ent re­sult."

He not­ed that the part­ner­ship is just one of the ways in which the TTOC has ma­te­ri­alised on the re-cal­i­brat­ed strate­gic plan, which start­ed in May, 2013, to in­crease T&T's gold medal count at the Olympic Games.

"In en­gag­ing NL­CB, we found some like-mind­ed in­di­vid­u­als... So in a very re­al sense, for the TTOC, to­day is a huge step for­ward," Lewis added, be­fore thank­ing its new part­ner.

He of­fered as­sur­ance that the ini­tia­tive will be one guid­ed by "trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty" and "will meet the TTOC's au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial process," es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the na­ture of the ven­ture (fund­ing for ath­letes) and the stig­ma that was once at­tached to the NL­CB.

He said sup­port for ath­letes' de­vel­op­ment by means of fund­ing "has not been what we ex­pect­ed."

"This will test the pub­lic... Ac­tions speak loud­er than words."