“Tri­ni” say­ings, id­ioms or proverbs are time­less and pro­vide im­por­tant life and busi­ness lessons.

Ac­cord­ing to a press re­lease from the T&T In­ter­na­tion­al Marathon (TTIM) com­mit­tee, the event has been re­tired af­ter 42 ‘don­key’ years.

The TTIM com­mit­tee on No­vem­ber 7 said not on­ly would the 2025 edi­tion be can­celled, but the race is now no more.

The com­mit­tee came in­to be­ing when one of the race’s sig­nif­i­cant spon­sors pulled out in 2009.

The demise of the event which start­ed in 1983, isn’t a case of “maljo” or “bo­kee”.

Keen marathon en­thu­si­asts watched from the wav­ing gallery the demise in re­cent years.

There were grow­ing com­plaints from loy­al par­tic­i­pants about their race ex­pe­ri­ence against the back­drop of dwin­dling en­tries.

The Marathon Com­mit­tee—Chair Di­ane Hen­der­son, Fran­cis William-Smith, Bruce Laukn­er and Au­gus­tine “Gus” Forde de­serve cred­it for their ded­i­ca­tion and com­mit­ment to keep­ing the event go­ing. They did their best, gave their all and “break plen­ty dew”. It was their labour of love.

Dur­ing an i95.5fm in­ter­view with An­dre Bap­tiste last Sat­ur­day, Hen­der­son ex­plained that the com­mit­tee com­prised in­di­vid­u­als who un­der­stood the tech­ni­cal as­pects of road run­ning and dis­tance events and felt that the na­tion­al gov­ern­ing body for track and field had a “sprint bias.”

She con­firmed that the mar­ket­ing sup­port came from the ma­jor spon­sor. The TTIM com­mit­tee chair re­vealed that at its peak the marathon was a mil­lion-dol­lar event and that in re­cent years they op­er­at­ed with a $450,000 bud­get.

One may well ask, “Why did spon­sors desert the icon­ic sports event that at one time cap­tured na­tion­al, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al in­ter­est?”

The T&T In­ter­na­tion­al Marathon was an ea­ger­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed event with ‘jam-cram’ crowds com­ing out along the route to cheer on the run­ners. Who can ever for­get: “Look Granny Luces com­ing!”

In the five days since the No­vem­ber 7 TTIM com­mit­tee re­lease, in­ter­est­ed par­ties have had dis­cus­sions with the com­mit­tee to “save the event.”

One may ask how come the in­ter­est on­ly af­ter the event has been re­tired.

The de­ci­sion to re­tire the T&T In­ter­na­tion­al Marathon is not a “vai-ki-vai”, half-pick duck, “ratchifee” or ill-ad­vised pub­lic re­la­tions stunt to gal­vanise fi­nan­cial and hu­man re­source sup­port.

The truth of the mat­ter for the TTIM com­mit­tee is they were try­ing to dance top in mud as times changed, peo­ple change and the en­vi­ron­ment has changed.

The end of an era, T&T In­ter­na­tion­al Marathon is no more head­lines is a sports event mar­ket­ing case study. For all the var­i­ous the­o­ries as to why the marathon is no more, the fin­ger-point­ing and ex­cus­es are miss­ing an im­por­tant re­al­i­ty.

Re­gard­less of eras and chang­ing times, sports gen­er­ate deep emo­tions that make you feel like you’re a part of some­thing much larg­er than your­self.

The demise of the T&T In­ter­na­tion­al Marathon is a mar­ket­ing fail­ure. A prod­uct life-cy­cle man­age­ment fail­ure. This isn’t a con­dem­na­tion of the ded­i­cat­ed TTIM com­mit­tee.

As their chair, Hen­der­son ad­mit­ted they had the road run­ning and dis­tance event tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise.

Through­out my sports lead­er­ship ca­reer, I have al­ways giv­en strate­gic pri­or­i­ty to Mar­ket­ing 101: Pay at­ten­tion to prod­uct/ser­vice life cy­cle man­age­ment and de­vel­op­ment. If you don’t pay at­ten­tion you will see “snake say is worm and cra­paud will smoke yuh pipe”.

By pay­ing at­ten­tion to the rudi­ments of prod­uct/ser­vice life-cy­cle man­age­ment, you will be able to say “De deep­er de dark­ness, de near­er de dawn”.

Then again, “com­mon sense make be­fore book sense”.