Sean Nero

Olympic and Pan Amer­i­can Games medal­list Em­manuel Cal­len­der says the de­ter­mi­na­tion of this coun­try's ath­letes to al­ways ex­cel has led to T&T's im­proved medal po­si­tion at the Pan Amer­i­can Games, which came to an end in Toron­to, Cana­da, last week­end.

Speak­ing to the T&T Guardian at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on the team's re­turn home on Tues­day morn­ing, he said, "We came out with eight medals. We al­so came out with a lot of per­son­al best. The team is a fair­ly new one. We have some new ath­letes run­ning on the 4 x 100 re­lay. The chem­istry is now start­ing to build. It's a very good one."

Of the re­lay team of which he was a mem­ber, Cal­len­der said, "We on­ly had one day to prac­tice be­fore we ran that 4 by 100m. We had to pull it to­geth­er as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. I think we did very well. We came off the heat above a lot of oth­er coun­tries. Our hand-offs weren't the best, but we can work on it and make things a lot bet­ter."

With his sights al­ready fixed on this coun­try's par­tic­i­pa­tion at the World Cham­pi­onships and oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al meets lat­er this year, Cal­len­der said the 4 by 100-me­tre re­lay team of which he was apart, which se­cured bronze for T&T, still need­ed to over­come some tech­ni­cal hur­dles from the starter to the an­chor, if they were to re­tain a place on the podi­um in the fu­ture.

Dur­ing the time they spent to­geth­er, he was clear that his team­mates were un­doubt­ed­ly com­mit­ted.Com­ment­ing on his present form, the 100 me­tre sprint­er said if the Rio 2016 Olympic was to­mor­row he would not be ready.He be­lieved same could be said for his team­mates.

"I don't think peo­ple un­der­stand what it takes to step up on that Olympic podi­um. It's not an easy task. We have to work a lot clos­er with the Min­is­ter of Sport and the TTOC and oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions and cor­po­rate T&T, to help the ath­letes in terms of fi­nances be­cause fi­nances are a main part in prepa­ra­tion go­ing to­wards the Olympic Games. Truth be told, most of the ath­letes don't work. We have to de­pend on the Olympic Sol­i­dar­i­ty Fund and the Elite Fund­ing to en­sure that we stay healthy, pay coach­ing fees, pay rent and the oth­er stuff so we could be on the medal podi­um," he said.