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Tuesday, February 25, 2025

Still a long way to get to Rio

by

20150903

Full cred­it to fi­nal­ists Michele Lee Ahye, Kel­ly Ann Bap­tiste and Machel Ce­de­nio, as well as our 4x100 ladies and 4x400 men's team, which brought home medals from the World Cham­pi­onships in Bei­jing.

But we learnt one thing. There is a lot of work to be done ahead of next year's Rio Olympics. Get­ting to the fi­nals is a step in the right di­rec­tion. It acts as a cat­a­lyst for the ath­lete, coach and man­age­ment team to as­sess what needs to be done to turn fi­nal­ists in­to medal­ists.

Ce­de­nio, at 19, was sev­enth and can on­ly im­prove with prop­er guid­ance. He will re­call that ear­li­er this year, he beat La Shawn Mer­ritt but the Amer­i­can placed sec­ond in the fi­nal in a per­son­al best time, en­sur­ing that he was at his best for the Cham­pi­onships.

Next year will be sim­i­lar but the ri­val­ry be­comes even more sig­nif­i­cant be­cause it is the Olympic Games.

We must hope that the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ic Ad­min­is­tra­tion (NAAA) works with the ath­letes for the fu­ture. Every­one needs to share a com­mon goal. While some of these ath­letes will have man­agers with dif­fer­ent mind­set, the NAAA and the ath­lete must sit with the coach­es and man­agers and set a clear path­way.

Af­ter the man­ag­er's re­port on the World Cham­pi­onships is com­plet­ed and ad­dressed, a meet­ing should be called as soon as pos­si­ble. If the NAAA have to trav­el to meet the ath­lete and their team out­side of T&T, this must be a pri­or­i­ty. I would sug­gest a team of three or four from the NAAA, com­pris­ing of high­ly in­flu­en­tial and re­spect­ed per­sons such as the pres­i­dent, Ephraim Ser­rette, and mem­bers such as Hase­ly Craw­ford, Dr Ian Hy­po­lite and Dex­ter Voisin.

My oth­er con­cern re­mains Keshorn Wal­cott, the 2012 Olympic gold medal­list who failed to progress out of the first round. The most dis­turb­ing as­pect is that this is the sec­ond World Cham­pi­onships where Wal­cott has strug­gled. His con­queror Kenya's Julius Vego in 2012 fin­ished 12th in the Olympic fi­nal.

At the press con­fer­ence for the 2012 fi­nal, I re­call that the first three were on stage and a num­ber of ques­tions were thrown by the Kenyan con­tin­gent, ask­ing for tips on how to im­prove their throw­er. This was a nov­el event for the Kenyans and you could see they were at­tempt­ing to ac­quire as much knowl­edge as pos­si­ble. To their cred­it, their ath­lete im­proved tremen­dous­ly, not on­ly throw­ing in ex­cess of 92 me­tres but he is al­so the reign­ing Com­mon­wealth Cham­pi­on, where he al­so beat Wal­cott.

Un­less Wal­cott does some­thing quick­ly, he may find him­self hav­ing to play sec­ond fid­dle to the con­sis­tent Yego.

Wal­cott's first throw was his longest but sad­ly he lost his bal­ance and over­stepped and so it was con­sid­ered a foul throw and he nev­ered re­cov­ered. Sim­i­lar­ly on Yego's first throw, he fell and it was al­so de­clared null and void but he re­cov­ered to make the fi­nal and then a few days lat­er re­gained his com­po­sure to win.

Wal­cott will have to ex­am­ine his train­ing regime. He can­not ex­pect to gain in this coun­try and must trav­el to Eu­rope and get match fit and ready. As good as his lo­cal coach is, there is noth­ing to beat ex­pe­ri­ence. I al­so be­lieve that be­cause of ear­ly suc­cess, Wal­cott needs guid­ance and coun­sel­ing and if it is that he can­not or will not lis­ten to the NAAA, then an­oth­er av­enue has to be sought. The Olympic Com­mit­tee pres­i­dent Bri­an Lewis is very ath­lete dri­ven and fo­cused and I am cer­tain he will en­sure that a req­ui­site team is put in place to as­sist some of the ob­vi­ous needs of Wal­cott.

I be­lieve that psy­chol­o­gist Dr Mar­garet Ot­t­ley should be hired im­me­di­ate­ly and brought home for the next ten to 12 months to work with as many ath­letes as pos­si­ble in time for Rio.

Tal­ent alone will not do it, we have to have the men­tal and emo­tion­al strength to go with it.

With­out a doubt, our men's 4x400 me­tres re­lay team can win gold in Rio. This cur­rent team of Ren­ny Quow, La Londe Gor­don, De­on Lendore, Machel Ce­de­nio and Jar­rin Solomon can reap suc­cess.

Once Je­hue Gor­don is ful­ly re­cov­ered from his lat­est in­jury and with his stud­ies com­plet­ed, 2016 should be a strong year for him. His event was one of the few where the times were not as good as when he won in Moscow, which au­gurs well for him.

It was good to see the NAAA tak­ing the bold step of in­cor­po­rat­ing some of our for­mer ath­letes in­to their sys­tem. We have seen Nicon­nor Alexan­der get­ting in­volved and most re­cent­ly Ato Boldon with the women's re­lay team. This group can be­come a long term core for suc­cess and with the lead­er­ship of Bap­tiste and the likes of Lee Ahye, Hack­ett, Thomas, Khal­i­fa St Fort and Kami­ra Du­rant, there is a lot to smile about.

It looks promis­ing, but as most men know, looks are some­times de­ceiv­ing.


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