We all ea­ger­ly await­ed the start of the IAAF cham­pi­onships where the world's best track and field per­form­ers were ex­pect­ed to be at their best for this aus­pi­cious oc­ca­sion at the Bird's Nest Sta­di­um in Bei­jing, Chi­na.The ex­pec­ta­tions of a bet­ter medal per­for­mance from our ath­letes were per­haps the re­sult of our team's per­for­mance at last month's Pan Am Games in Cana­da.

How­ev­er, it seems that the joy of win­ning medals tends to con­ceal some of the im­por­tant is­sues which may have been hap­pen­ing with the ath­letes who failed to get among the win­ners.Be­fore the start of the Games the na­tion­al 4x100 me­tres re­lay team lost two of its mem­bers due to in­juries and by the con­clu­sion of the 100 me­tres event it lost a third which means that the red, white and black na­tion­al flag will not be fly­ing in the men's sprint re­lay at the fa­mous Bird's Nest sta­di­um.

By the end of the sec­ond day in Bei­jing, the pic­ture was be­gin­ning to show it­self with a fair de­gree of con­sis­ten­cy, es­pe­cial­ly with our Men's 400m run­ners and Women's sprint­ers.

How­ev­er, the sto­ry of Ke­ston Bled­man was dis­turb­ing from all an­gles, see­ing that he ran a won­der­ful sub-10 100m at the Na­tion­al Cham­pi­onships and looked ex­tra­or­di­nar­i­ly com­fort­able at the end of his run, which bet­tered all the oth­er na­tion­al sprint­ers.His fans must have been dis­ap­point­ed when he hurt his groin in the Pan Am Games, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter he had shown ex­cel­lent qual­i­ty over this dis­tance for at least six years.

Sure­ly, that type of in­jury was not the type to re­pair in any short amount of time.The na­tion­al cham­pi­on sprint­er told T&T of­fi­cials he want­ed to miss the Pan Am Games in or­der to bet­ter pre­pare for the World Cham­pi­onships.A re­port stat­ed that he was told he was get­ting mon­ey from the gov­ern­ment and had to run.

He even dis­cussed the is­sue with his two coach­es al­though no one want­ed to lis­ten. The lad was just get­ting a se­ries of in­jec­tions and oth­er med­i­c­i­nal stuff to re­pair a groin strain when on­ly rest and spe­cialised treat­ment could bring nor­mal­cy.It was a sim­i­lar pic­ture for Je­hue Gor­don, whose lead-up to the games via the Na­tion­al Cham­pi­onships pro­vid­ed glimpses of un­der-pre­pared­ness.

How­ev­er, he was still cho­sen to face the starter in the most pres­ti­gious ath­let­ic com­pe­ti­tion in the world.I won­der whether the peo­ple in charge of our ath­letes' prepa­ra­tion un­der­stand that with an in­jury one can­not sim­ply per­form at his best and that en­cour­ag­ing an in­jured ath­lete to use med­ica­tion to per­form be­cause the Gov­ern­ment has in­vest­ed in him is lu­di­crous. It demon­strates a lack of knowl­edge that ex­ists in the de­vel­op­ment of our sports­men and women.

With­in the con­test of any sport at the high­est lev­el, no in­jury should al­low the ath­lete to per­form at his/her best.One can un­der­stand Cleo Borel's in­jury which oc­curred dur­ing the event, and even then, that in­jury would have re­tard­ed her progress as she ad­mit­ted to re­porters.Why then did she con­tin­ue to be un­able to op­er­ate at her best, know­ing that she was in­ca­pable of giv­ing her best?

One is some­times left to won­der if pre­dic­tions such as "10 golds by 2020" is ex­pect­ed to bring any more sci­en­tif­ic ap­proach to the ath­letes.How­ev­er, I have to ad­mit that af­ter see­ing the times and plac­ings of Machel Ce­de­no, Lalonde Gor­don and Ren­ny Quow in the 400m and Michel Lee Ahye, Se­moy Hack­ett and Kel­ly Ann Bap­tiste in the 100m pre­lim­i­nar­ies, bet­ter days may be ahead for these two events and, of course, the re­lays.

Why not learn lessons from Us­ain Bolt re­gard­ing the sci­en­tif­ic method in which in­juries are treat­ed and the val­ue of see­ing the fit­ness ful­ly re­paired?We shall sit and await the progress of those who are healthy and giv­ing of their best.