Sean Nero

Mikel Thomas, the 2015 Pan Amer­i­can Games 110-me­tre hur­dles sil­ver medal­list, gets ready to chal­lenge the world at the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which start­ed yes­ter­day, with the in­tent to de­liv­er re­sults that will make the T&T pop­u­lace proud.

This is the 29-year-old ath­lete's third con­sec­u­tive ap­pear­ance at the Olympics, hav­ing proud­ly worn the na­tion­al colours in Bei­jing 2008 and Lon­don 2012.

Hav­ing grown spir­i­tu­al­ly and emo­tion­al­ly and with his mind and body con­di­tioned for the task ahead, Thomas, re­vealed to the Guardian be­fore head­ing to Brazil to fly the red, white and black na­tion­al colours that: "This is my third con­sec­u­tive Olympic ap­pear­ance and I be­lieve it's the one I have the best com­po­sure and phys­i­cal fit­ness for. So, I am look­ing for­ward to go­ing out there, hope­ful­ly, leav­ing a per­for­mance that will leave my coun­try proud and in­spire and en­cour­age oth­ers along the way."

He sees rep­re­sent­ing T&T as a bless­ing, an ho­n­our, a priv­i­lege and a curse at times say­ing, "We ded­i­cate count­less hours, years for mo­ments that hope­ful­ly will leave an im­pact for the na­tion that we rep­re­sent and the sport­ing fra­ter­ni­ty. To rep­re­sent T&T has al­ways been a priv­i­lege, to show what is pos­si­ble when we as a peo­ple put our minds to­geth­er and work to­wards some­thing, be­cause I am not an is­land, so I can't say that did this on my own. It's through sup­port (from) coach­es, fam­i­ly, friends, count­less oth­ers who have be­come part of my jour­ney, rep­re­sent­ing sport­ing bod­ies that en­vi­sion some­thing that we are will­ing to sup­port."

He ex­pressed hope that na­tion­als ac­cess­ing so­cial me­dia plat­forms and live stream­ing ser­vices would tru­ly be­come a part of this jour­ney and in the process hu­man­ise the process, help­ing peo­ple un­der­stand just how hard it was to walk the road of an elite ath­lete.

"I need to help peo­ple un­der­stand how hard it is to walk this road at times through de­feat, through ques­tions of worth and self sac­ri­fice. Your life is lit­er­al­ly on hold for a num­ber of years. There is very lit­tle to gain than peo­ple may think and it's very, very hard to say that in your field, your craft, you are try­ing to be the very best in the world: not just at your com­pa­ny, not just in your coun­try, but in the world. It's a huge gam­ble that we take, but we do it out of pride and love and the chance that we can leave some­thing that would last longer than our time here," said the cham­pi­on hur­dler.

Re­flect­ing on his par­tic­i­pa­tion at the Bei­jing Olympics and then in Lon­don, Thomas said, "You just don't wake up the year of, and de­cide you want to make it to the Olympics. Years of hard work, blood, sweat and tears that builds up, for mo­ments, a few sec­onds that al­lows you an op­por­tu­ni­ty. And, mak­ing the team does not end the jour­ney. You are just con­tin­u­ing to press on, con­tin­u­ing to re­fine your­self, your skills, in or­der to achieve greater."

While he de­scribed 2015 as one of his best years, the top ath­lete was firm in his be­lief that for him, the best were yet to come. Com­pet­ing at last sea­son's in­ter­na­tion­al cham­pi­onships and know­ing what it felt like to be ex­pect­ed to win, as well as be­ing the un­der­dog and reg­is­ter­ing per­for­mances that al­lowed the favourite to take no­tice, em­pow­ered him.

Apart from the Pan Amer­i­can Games in Cana­da, at which he cap­tured a sil­ver in 13.17 sec­onds, he won gold for T&T when he took the 110m hur­dles in 13.23 and inked a new cham­pi­onship record at the NACAC se­nior cham­pi­onship in Cos­ta Ri­ca.