An­dre Bap­tise

The moth­er of na­tion­al gym­nast The­ma Williams is con­cerned about her daugh­ter's par­tic­i­pa­tion at the Rio Olympics, stat­ing that the T&T Gym­nas­tics Fed­er­a­tion (TTGF) is not fol­low­ing the se­lec­tion pol­i­cy that was set.On Thurs­day, on the pop­u­lar Is­ports pro­gramme (i95.5fm) host­ed by An­dre Er­rol Bap­tiste, a lot of con­cerns were raised by Williams' moth­er He­len Adams.

Adams is claim­ing that her daugh­ter should be the one se­lect­ed to rep­re­sent T&T at the Olympic Test Event in Rio, Brazil in April 2016 as she cur­rent­ly has a high­er rank­ing than fel­low na­tion­al gym­nast Marisa Dick. Williams and Dick both com­pet­ed in the artis­tic women's in­di­vid­ual qual­i­fi­ca­tion at the World Gym­nas­tics Cham­pi­onships in Glas­gow, with Williams fin­ish­ing 59th and Dick end­ing 77th over­all.

Adams stat­ed the se­lec­tion pol­i­cy of the TTGF states, "The WAG (Women's Artis­tic Gym­nas­tics) gym­nast who scores the high­est all-around score at the World Gym­nas­tics Cham­pi­onships in Glas­gow 2015 will be the ath­lete se­lect­ed by the TTGF Se­lec­tion Com­mit­tee to move for­ward to rep­re­sent T&T at the Olympic Test Event in Rio, Brazil in April 2016 once her scores al­low her se­lec­tion by the In­ter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of Gym­nas­tics to this event."

On the ra­dio show Adams said, "A se­lec­tion pol­i­cy was es­tab­lished by the T&T Gym­nas­tics Fed­er­a­tion as it re­lates to the Rio Olympics, and this was giv­en to every­one, and so af­ter the last event, the rank­ings read The­ma (Williams) in 59th po­si­tion and Marisa (Dick) in 77th po­si­tion. If there is on­ly one spot, The­ma, based on this should be the au­to­mat­ic choice."

Adams added: "In­stead, we are now be­ing told, that the two girls (Williams and Dick) will have to com­pete in two more events, and then they will de­cide again who is rep­re­sent­ing T&T, but this is not right, it is not fair."

"At this time, The­ma should be prepar­ing for the Olympic Tri­als in 2016, but in­stead, this is hap­pen­ing, which can­not be good for her mind, and even though we are ask­ing ques­tions, as to what is caus­ing this, we are not get­ting much an­swers from any­one in the As­so­ci­a­tion."

The T&T Guardian has al­so learnt, that John Ged­dert, the coach of The­ma Williams, has since sent two emails to the pres­i­dent of the T&T Gym­nas­tics Fed­er­a­tion David Mar­quez, and has not re­ceived a re­ply to date. The first email was sent on Mon­day and the sec­ond was sent on Thurs­day.

Sport Min­is­ter gets in­volved

Al­so ap­pear­ing on Is­ports was the Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs Daryl Smith, who ad­mit­ted, that he had heard some of this be­fore but need­ed to lis­ten to the two sides. Smith said: "We have on­ly heard one (side), but if this is hap­pen­ing, we will check and get the full de­tails. I have not seen any cor­re­spon­dence as yet to the Min­istry of Sports, but it is some­thing that we are go­ing to ex­am­ine as we be­lieve in plac­ing the ath­letes first and en­sur­ing that all sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions op­er­ate trans­par­ent­ly and fair­ly."

Adams planned to hand de­liv­er all the rel­e­vant doc­u­ments to the Min­is­ter of Sports yes­ter­day in the hope that this mat­ter could be quick­ly re­solved through the in­ter­ven­tion of the Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs.