Ever so of­ten it is nec­es­sary to re­mind or in­tro­duce the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go to fac­tu­al in­for­ma­tion about the Olympic Move­ment. The who, what and why. What is the pur­pose of the Olympic Move­ment? The move­ment is of long stand­ing. Its his­to­ry can be traced back to the year 776 BC.

The Olympic Move­ment en­com­pass­es or­gan­i­sa­tions, ath­letes and oth­er per­sons who agree to be guid­ed by the Olympic Char­ter. Their shared goal is to con­tribute to build­ing a peace­ful and bet­ter world by ed­u­cat­ing youth through sport prac­tised in ac­cor­dance with Olymp­ism and its val­ues.

Led by the In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee (IOC) the main con­stituents of the Olympic Move­ment are the In­ter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tions (IF) and the Na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tees (NOCs) .

The Olympic Move­ment al­so in­cludes the Or­gan­is­ing Com­mit­tees of the Olympic Games( OCOGS); the na­tion­al as­so­ci­a­tions, clubs and per­sons be­long­ing to the IFs and NOCs, in par­tic­u­lar the ath­letes whose in­ter­ests con­si­tute a fun­da­men­tal el­e­ment of the Olympic Move­ment's ac­tion; judges, ref­er­ees, coach­es and the oth­er sports of­fi­cials and tech­ni­cans. It al­so in­cludes oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions and in­sti­tu­tions as recog­nised by the IOC.

The prin­ci­ples and val­ues of Olymp­ism sup­port the Olympic Move­ment in its mis­sion to en­sure the reg­u­lar cel­e­bra­tion of the Olympic Games, place ath­letes at the heart of the Olympic Move­ment, ed­u­cate youth through sport and pro­mote the Olympic val­ues in so­ci­ety.

The mis­sion, val­ues and work­ing prin­ci­ples un­der­pin a vi­sion that is em­bed­ded deep with­in the Olympic Move­ment, con­tribut­ing to its ul­ti­mate goal of build­ing a bet­ter world through sport.

Every mem­ber of the Olympic Move­ment is sup­pose to be guid­ed by the Olympic Char­ter- the cod­i­fi­ca­tion of the Fun­da­men­tal Prin­ci­ples of Olymp­ism, Rules and Bye-Laws adopt­ed by the IOC. It gov­erns the or­gan­i­sa­tion, ac­tions and func­tion­ing of the Olympic Move­ment and es­tab­lish­es the cel­e­bra­tion of the Olympic Games.

The Olympic Char­ter serves three main pur­pos­es:

(1) As a ba­sic in­stru­ment of a con­sti­tu­tion­al na­ture,

(2) It serves as statutes for the IOC

(3) It de­fines the rec­i­p­ro­cal rights and oblig­a­tions of the main con­stituents of the Olympic Move­ment.

The T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee(TTOC) by virtue of the Olympic Char­ter is con­sid­ered one of the main con­stituents of the Olympic Move­ment. The TTOC as a con­se­quence has a du­ty, oblig­a­tion and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to rec­og­nize it is ex­pect­ed to be held to a high­er stan­dard in lead­ing the Olympic Move­ment on the twin is­land Re­pub­lic.

On mat­ters of gov­er­nance, tak­ing de­ci­sions to se­cure the sus­tain­able fu­ture of the TTOC and the wel­fare and safe­guard­ing of ath­letes . The role and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of the TTOC is both sim­ple and com­plex. The Olympic Char­ter can both me a guide or a shack­le but re­gard­less it re­mains the ref­er­ence point. The TTOC can­not be a shrink­ing vi­o­let not in in the face of the chal­lenges of 21st cen­tu­ry T&T. It needs to be bold, brave and un­con­quer­able.

Ed­i­tor's note:

Bri­an Lewis is the pres­i­dent of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) and his views are not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of the or­gan­i­sa­tion.