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Saturday, February 22, 2025

Rolf Bartolo - A man of integrity

by

Kelvin "N"
1726 days ago
20200601
Rolf Bartolo, right, receives the “Champion Turf Performer” trophy from Lema King, owner Root of Jesse in March.

Rolf Bartolo, right, receives the “Champion Turf Performer” trophy from Lema King, owner Root of Jesse in March.

Ralph Banwarie

Trib­utes keep pour­ing in for Rolf Bar­to­lo from dif­fer­ent quar­ters in Trinidad and To­ba­go. On Sun­day morn­ing the own­er/train­er/breed­er passed away qui­et­ly at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal af­ter a short bat­tle with can­cer.

The Horse rac­ing fra­ter­ni­ty to which Bar­to­lo has be­longed for decades is pay­ing trib­ute to him. Yes­ter­day, the Ari­ma Race Club Pres­i­dent, Robert Bernard sang prais­es for Bar­to­lo. He stat­ed "Rolf was a man of im­pec­ca­ble in­tegri­ty. He was in­deed an ex­treme­ly nice guy. He worked on the Ari­ma Race Club Man­age­ment com­mit­tee for the past two years and he shared his knowl­edge and ar­tic­u­lat­ed his po­si­tion eas­i­ly. I can say with­out a doubt that he had no bias. In­deed he was a true gen­tle­man. What marks Bar­to­lo as a man of in­tegri­ty is the fact that no one in the rac­ing fra­ter­ni­ty has and will say any­thing neg­a­tive about him.'

The last con­ver­sa­tion I had with Bar­to­lo was af­ter he came out of the St Clair Nurs­ing Home be­fore his re­lapse. He told me then that he was about to be dis­charged. Then I got the news of his pass­ing on Sun­day morn­ing. He will be missed."

Bar­to­lo, 74, was an ac­com­plished teacher, cy­clist, foot­baller, coach and train­er. He will be re­mem­bered for be­ing a goal­keep­er and coach of the leg­endary Maple Foot­ball Club. He won many ac­co­lades with Maple and the Pres­i­dent of the North­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (NFA) - On Mon­day, An­tho­ny Har­ford, sent a trib­ute to Rolf Bar­to­lo from the North­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion.

"The Ex­ec­u­tive and Mem­bers of the North­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion to­day mourn the pass­ing of stal­wart and de­pend­able mem­ber Rolf Bar­to­lo. Bar­to­lo passed on in the wee hours on Sun­day morn­ing. Bar­to­lo was a mem­ber of the Maple Club for more than 40 years of its 102-year ex­is­tence and was an ef­fi­cient goal­keep­er, but made his name men­tor­ing and coach­ing a cadre of young play­ers in­clud­ing stand­out Reynold George and Dex­ter Skeene to the North Zone ti­tle in 1991. Maple un­der Bar­to­lo com­pet­ed in the Na­tion­al League in 1992. He con­tin­ued his coach­ing and man­age­ment of the club un­til 2017 when he again took the club to North Zone ho­n­ours, Maple go­ing on that year to qual­i­fy for the Na­tion­al Su­per League. The club de­nied par­tic­i­pa­tion.

Rolf Bar­to­lo al­so coached the North Zon­al Team in the An­nu­al In­ter­zone Com­pe­ti­tion for sev­er­al years. He was al­so the dri­ving force in or­gan­is­ing the An­nu­al Maple ver­sus Malvern Old Boys Game.

"He Fi­nal­ly left foot­ball to con­cen­trate more ful­ly on his work as a race­horse train­er in 2017 and by 2018 re­ceived an award from the Ari­ma Race Club (ARC) as the coun­try's most Im­proved train­er, a vote tak­en by his peers.

The NFA sends con­do­lences to Mr Bar­to­lo's Fam­i­ly."


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