Clydeen Mc­Don­ald

The Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, the scene of the great­est mo­ments in T&T's sport­ing his­to­ry, was for­mal­ly re­opened in a cer­e­mo­ny held at the venue's car park in Mu­cu­rapo on Thurs­day. The up­grade of the venue, which start­ed eight months ago, was orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled to be com­plet­ed in time for the in­au­gur­al Caribbean Games that was can­celled. How­ev­er, with the venue con­stant­ly in use for events such as the Na­tion­al Track and Field Cham­pi­onships and World Cup qual­i­fiers for the na­tion­al foot­ball team, the up­grades suf­fered sev­er­al de­lays. Some of the work done in­clud­ed new seat­ing in the cov­ered stand which sits 6,000, a re­designed VIP lounge and the erec­tion of this coun­try's largest na­tion­al flag in the venue's car park.

Speak­ing at the cer­e­mo­ny, T&T's lone Olympic gold medal­list and the venue's name­sake Hase­ly Craw­ford humbly stat­ed his ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the work done.

"It gives me great pride to see that we are start­ing to re­spect this space," said Craw­ford. "I re­mem­ber it was one week af­ter the new min­is­ter took up his post in 2007, I wrote him a let­ter ex­press­ing con­cern about the poor con­di­tion of the sta­di­um. "He told me at that point that he would take a note to cab­i­net to have the re­pairs done and from the work I have seen, he has de­liv­ered on that promise he made to me," said Craw­ford. He said a lack of re­spect from the pub­lic and poor man­age­ment al­lowed the venue to reach the de­plorable state it had. "I want to be­lieve that it was be­cause of poor man­age­ment that sta­di­um got to that state. But af­ter hav­ing dis­cus­sions with the of­fi­cials, who will now man­age the space, I feel this sa­cred space will be with us for the next 20 or 30 years," said Craw­ford.

Point­ing to some of the events that took place at the venue, such as the crown­ing of box­er Leslie Stew­art as a world cham­pi­on in 1987, the So­ca War­riors' suc­cess­ful 2006 World Cup qual­i­fy­ing cam­paign, and T&T crown­ing as joint world cham­pi­ons in net­ball with New Zealand and Aus­tralia in 1979, Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs Gary Hunt said his min­istry was work­ing to make the venue sig­nif­i­cant in this na­tion's his­to­ry. "This is the lo­ca­tion where the na­tion is al­ways seen at its best. This is where the cit­i­zens of T&T come to­geth­er as one to cel­e­brate our trib­utes as a peo­ple. We must be com­mit­ted to mak­ing this spot a sym­bol of na­tion­al pride," said Hunt.

He said the life of the sta­di­um name­sake should serve as mo­ti­va­tion for the na­tion­al youth. "It was with sheer de­ter­mi­na­tion and hard work that Hase­ly Craw­ford rose from hum­ble be­gin­nings to be­come the fastest man in the world 33 years ago. We must tell this sto­ry to con­stant­ly re­mind our youth of the pos­si­bil­i­ties that ex­ist with hard work," said Hunt. The Jean Pierre Com­plex, where eight mul­ti­ple in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard out­door courts were in­stalled, al­so had work done. Craw­ford and Min­is­ter Hunt rose the na­tion­al flag, which is 60 me­tres long and 36 me­tres wide, dur­ing the cer­e­mo­ny which was at­tend­ed by May­or of Port-of-Spain Murchi­son Brown along with sev­er­al oth­er rep­re­sen­ta­tives from var­i­ous na­tion­al sport­ing bod­ies.