WAL­TER AL­IBEY

Fol­low­ing on the heels of the res­ig­na­tions of T&T Gym­nas­tics Fed­er­a­tion (TTGF) mem­bers An­der­son Charles, pres­i­dent of the TTGF Coach­ing Body and Dale Ali, an­oth­er mem­ber ear­li­er this week, it was con­firmed yes­ter­day that two oth­er mem­bers, Carynn Chen and Sarah Lam­bert, have al­so ten­dered their res­ig­na­tions.

The fed­er­a­tion, un­der pres­sure for their de­ci­sion to re­place gym­nast The­ma Williams with Maris­sa Dick at the Rio Test Event which was used as an Olympic Qual­i­fi­er on Sat­ur­day, could see a lot more res­ig­na­tions in the com­ing weeks. Yes­ter­day, gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the TTGF, Eli­cia Pe­ters-Charles said she can­not pre­dict if there will be any res­ig­na­tions and the amount, but re­vealed her mem­bers have been un­der tremen­dous pres­sure from the pub­lic and their em­ploy­ers.

"Fed­er­a­tion mem­bers have been la­belled by the me­dia as dis­hon­est with no in­tegri­ty. They have even said we have done things like a thief in the night, which has got­ten the at­ten­tion of some of our em­ploy­ers," Pe­ters-Charles said. She added, "Some peo­ple who have worked with com­pa­nies for many years with­out com­plaints, were sum­moned by their boss­es and warned etc and the sad thing is that they are do­ing this for free."

Pe­ters-Charles, who broke her si­lence for the first time, said Lam­bert of­fered her res­ig­na­tion af­ter she felt the com­mit­tee had bro­ken down and there was need for fresh faces. She, how­ev­er, could not give a rea­son for Chen. Both Ali and Charles called it quits be­cause of the way the TTGF han­dled the The­ma Williams is­sue.

TTGF mem­bers al­so re­ceived death threats, Pe­ters-Charles re­vealed, adding it was why there were mem­bers of the Po­lice Ser­vice at Wednes­day's press con­fer­ence at the Cham­ber of Com­merce, West­moor­ings. The fed­er­a­tion on Wednes­day filed a re­port at the Four Roads Po­lice Sta­tion, Diego Mar­tin, due to the death threats.

"There is a lot of hate, anger and oth­er emo­tions out there and we can­not af­ford to take it light­ly, which was why we got po­lice pro­tec­tion for us all and not just Dick alone," Pe­ters-Charles said.She said it will be dif­fi­cult to se­cure the of­fi­cers dur­ing their per­son­al day-to-day af­fairs, as it was too cost­ly.

Pe­ters-Charles took a swipe at some of their mem­bers, say­ing some of those who re­signed were part of the de­ci­sion-mak­ing process to pull Williams from the Rio Test. She said she is con­vinced her fed­er­a­tion did what was right, in the in­ter­est of the ath­lete, af­ter a let­ter from the Williams' coach John Ged­dert de­scribed her per­for­mance as a dis­as­ter.

A let­ter sent to TTGF mem­bers hours be­fore the start of the Rio Test stat­ed Williams had fall­en six times. Pe­ters-Charles said, "How many times have we seen ath­letes be­ing de­stroyed be­cause of in­juries. Why should we per­sist with an in­jured ath­lete when there is an al­ter­na­tive there, ful­ly fit and wait­ing."

She al­so sought to clear the air on con­cerns that her fed­er­a­tion did not fol­low prop­er pro­to­col by con­sult­ing Head of the Del­e­ga­tion in Rio, Nicole Fuentes on the in­jury to Williams, say­ing Fuentes was a mas­sage ther­a­pist on­ly, and not the head of any del­e­ga­tion.

"There was on­ly one ath­lete in Rio and there­fore we didn't need a head of del­e­ga­tion, say­ing this is on­ly need­ed when there is more than one ath­lete. In this sit­u­a­tion the coach did the right thing by con­tact­ing the head of the fed­er­a­tion to make the de­ci­sion and the pres­i­dent got the sup­port of nine of the 15 mem­bers in de­cid­ing to pull Williams out," She said.

Since be­ing pulled out of the event, Williams' han­dlers have tak­en le­gal ac­tion.