Ten or more Olympic Cham­pi­ons by the year 2024. Ground­break­ing. Sig­nif­i­cant. Trinidad and To­ba­go Olympic and sport his­to­ry in the mak­ing. What's the one thing that must be done to cre­ate that re­al­i­ty?

Many of our Olympic and world lev­el ath­letes feel trapped in a time warp fac­ing for­mi­da­ble chal­lenges. Trapped but not de­feat­ed. Their silent screams go un­heard in the ca­coph­o­ny of noise em­a­nat­ing from the un­car­ing mob whose on­ly de­sire is to ride the band­wag­on of glo­ry. The process re­quired to cre­ate the de­mand­ed glo­ry by­passed as an in­con­ve­nient plea.

Those who re­al­ly care seem few while the ma­jor­i­ty can some­times be shamed in­to act­ing in the ath­letes' best in­ter­est.Trapped as the world of sport ad­vances in a tech­no­log­i­cal age.Bonds formed un­der duress, des­per­ate souls won­der­ing what comes next may well de­scribe the T&T ath­lete striv­ing to be a World and Olympic cham­pi­on.

Of­ten, lit­tle de­ci­sions are more re­veal­ing than big ones. Ath­lete cen­tred is the buzz word. But every day de­ci­sions are made that point to the fact that ath­lete cen­tred is not a deep com­mit­ment. Ath­letes and those as­pir­ing to achieve world class and Olympic sta­tus con­tin­ue to bat­tle the forces of medi­oc­rity.

The courage to pur­sue a dream is not all that is need­ed. Dis­ci­pline and the temer­i­ty to per­se­vere and fo­cus on what you can con­trol and to treat what you can't con­trol as dis­trac­tions is an aquired habit.Striv­ing to be sig­nif­i­cant not just suc­cess­ful.

Michael John­son and his team at Michael John­son Per­for­mance Cen­tre dur­ing last week's first ever bpTT/TTOC /MJP High Per­for­mance Sum­mit sought to pro­vide our ath­letes with an in­tense week of fo­cused high per­for­mance treat­ment and ser­vice.

BpTT, a TTOC part­ner and of­fi­cial sup­port­er of the Olympic Com­mit­tee cre­at­ed the op­por­tu­ni­ty for the TTOC to part­ner with the MJP Cen­tre and the leg­endary founder of MJP, Olympic and World Cham­pi­on Michael John­son.

In­di­vid­ual ath­letes would have had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­pe­ri­ence the high qual­i­ty and cut­ting edge cen­tre and ser­vices. Last week was how­ev­er the first ever train­ing camp type sum­mit. If you want to be the best, get ad­vice from the best. Al­so at the sum­mit was TTO mul­ti­ple Olympic medal leg­end, Ato Boldon.

In striv­ing for 10 or more Olympic Gold medals by the year 2024 a sys­tem of ex­cel­lence that is clear and de­fined that pro­vides a de­vel­op­ment path­way and per­for­mance man­age­ment sys­tem is a crit­i­cal suc­cess fac­tor.The de­mands of world and Olympic lev­el sport is not a nui­sance val­ue and a waste of fi­nan­cial re­sources.

Ex­tra­or­di­nary as it may seem TTO ath­letes must make a choice. Fol­low­ing their dream of Olympic and World ti­tles and be­ing the ab­solute best is not as im­por­tant as fit­ting in­to tra­di­tion­al think­ing as to what is a ca­reer.The jour­ney to ex­cel­lence for T&T ath­letes in both in­di­vid­ual and team sports re­mains a labour of love and a step too far.

Dreams are bru­tal­ly de­stroyed on the jagged rocks of harsh and un­kind words and old ways of think­ing and do­ing things.As a na­tion we cel­e­brate every suc­cess but ig­nore the process.Ath­letes who fol­low their dreams have to rise above what can feel like an on­go­ing bar­rage of emo­tion­al and men­tal in­sen­si­tiv­i­ty at best or de­lib­er­ate de­struc­tion at worse.

Trinidad and To­ba­go our tal­ent­ed sports­men and women are fac­ing un­kind ob­sta­cles that can be re­moved with a sin­cere ef­fort to un­der­stand the re­al­i­ties of the mod­ern world of glob­al sport.

�2 Bri­an Lewis is pres­i­dent of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee.