Sean Caz­abon

Suc­cess at the Pan Amer­i­can Games in Toron­to, Cana­da, which end­ed at the week­end, should not be used to mask the fail­ing sys­tems that ex­ist in sports, says Bri­an Lewis, pres­i­dent of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC).

T&T se­cured eight medals, three gold; three sil­ver and two bronze but Lewis said the coun­try should not be conned.

Lewis said: "I don't want us to use that to cov­er the short­com­ings and gaps that ex­ist in the sports sys­tem in T&T. Much more have to be done. I do be­lieve the best is yet to come."

While medals were be­ing won at the Pan Amer­i­can Games, said Lewis, many sport­ing dis­ci­plines in T&T, still did not have ac­cess to the coun­try's sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties. Fur­ther, so-called sport fans were not com­mit­ted to their pre­ferred sport and the ath­letes that spe­cialise in it, un­til the ath­letes were en­gaged in a do or die con­test.

"We are build­ing a lot of fa­cil­i­ties, but there has to be a sta­di­um use pol­i­cy be­cause as much as we are do­ing, a num­ber of sports­men and women and a num­ber of na­tion­al teams don't have ac­cess to the fa­cil­i­ties in the vol­ume and times that they need," he said.

Lewis de­scribed as "in­ter­est­ing" re­cent de­vel­op­ments in the sports sec­tor re­lat­ed to pub­lic/pri­vate part­ner­ships. He has been pay­ing par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion to re­marks by sports min­is­ter Brent San­cho who was on record de­clar­ing that sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties must earn rev­enue and ul­ti­mate­ly pay their way.

The TTOC of­fi­cials and the line min­is­ter were at odds on this is­sue, how­ev­er.

"I don't know what the con­text of that is, but that needs to be very care­ful­ly thought through and dis­cussed. If it is a Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy and they make sport one of the key pil­lars of na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, then they will see the in­vest­ment in sport as just that, an in­vest­ment rather than as ex­pen­di­ture. From a pol­i­cy per­spec­tive, I don't see any­body say­ing that schools must be rev­enue earn­ers; that health fa­cil­i­ties must be rev­enue earn­ers; that the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty fa­cil­i­ties�the fire sta­tions and the po­lice sta­tions�must be rev­enue earn­ers," said Lewis.

He added: "I am say­ing if sports fa­cil­i­ties must be rev­enue earn­ers in and of their own right, you are re­al­ly telling me that you are not giv­ing sport the same con­sid­er­a­tion and pri­ori­ti­sa­tion that you are giv­ing health, ed­u­ca­tion and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. I firm­ly be­lieve that sport is an im­por­tant as­pect of na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.

"We see coun­tries such as Sin­ga­pore and Qatar and Brazil that have made sports a key part of what­ev­er big vi­sion they have for their sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment. We re­al­ly need to get the pol­i­cy mak­ers and the politi­cians in­to that head space where sport is con­cern."

But de­spite those is­sues, Lewis said the TTOC re­mained ath­lete fo­cused and de­scribed the ef­forts of his ex­ec­u­tive and the ini­tia­tives to be achieved, as work in progress.

"As far as I am con­cerned, there is much more that the Olympic Com­mit­tee can do and must do and I al­so think that the Olympic Com­mit­tee can­not do it alone. Even in the con­text of ten or more Olympic gold medals by the year 2024, it must be­come more than a TTOC goal. It must be­come a na­tion­al goal.

"There are gaps, there are weak­ness­es, there and short com­ings and short falls in the sports sys­tem in T&T and we need to ad­dress them, be­cause if we don't ad­dress them we are not go­ing to be able to help our ath­letes push on to their full po­ten­tial." Lewis said.