Bri­an Lewis has been unan­i­mous­ly elect­ed as chair­man of the Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion of Na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tees (CANOC) in Bar­ran­quil­la in Colom­bia yes­ter­day.

Lewis, the head of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC), was the on­ly can­di­date for the po­si­tion fol­low­ing the with­draw­al of the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic's Jos� Joaqu�n Puel­lo, who claimed he had sub­mit­ted an ap­pli­ca­tion for the role by mis­take.

He will serve as CANOC chair­man un­til next year as he will com­plete the term of Bar­ba­dos' Steve Stoute.

Lewis has been in in­ter­im charge of the or­gan­i­sa­tion since he was elect­ed to re­place Stoute at CANOC's An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing in Guade­loupe in Oc­to­ber. Yes­ter­day's elec­tion took place at an Ex­tra­or­di­nary Gen­er­al As­sem­bly (EGM), along­side the Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and Caribbean Sports Or­ga­ni­za­tion Gen­er­al As­sem­bly.

"I look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing to work with my col­leagues to cre­ate a sus­tain­able fu­ture for the Caribbean Olympic Move­ment," Lewis told in­sid­e­thegames.

"It is an ho­n­our to be en­trust­ed with the role. As Olympic lead­ers, we in the Caribbean can make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence.

"We are de­ter­mined to bet­ter serve Caribbean Olympic ath­letes and the youth and young peo­ple of the re­gion through sport and Olymp­ism.

"For all the chal­lenges we face, it is an ex­cit­ing time of great op­por­tu­ni­ty. In uni­ty is our strength. Our strength is our uni­ty."

Lewis was the sole can­di­date for the role fol­low­ing Puel­lo's with­draw­al in bizarre cir­cum­stances. Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic Olympic Com­mit­tee (COD) of­fi­cials sup­pos­ed­ly ap­plied on the mis­tak­en as­sump­tion that it was part of his sep­a­rate ap­pli­ca­tion for the Pan Amer­i­can Sports Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­SO) Pres­i­den­cy.

Puel­lo's own sig­na­ture was on the of­fi­cial nom­i­na­tion form, which made clear it was an ap­pli­ca­tion for the po­si­tion of CANOC chair­man, but a let­ter to the Nom­i­na­tions Com­mit­tee claimed they "mis­took the CANOC nom­i­na­tion form as part of the pro­ce­dures set for the PA­SO elec­tions."

"Steve Stoute did tremen­dous work and put down a great foun­da­tion. I again ex­tend on be­half of CANOC our sin­cere and heart­felt grat­i­tude.

"CANOC has built an ex­cel­lent rep­u­ta­tion un­der Mr Stoute and we in­tend to build on his work.

"I have a lot of con­fi­dence in the Olympic sport lead­ers with­in CANOC. We are ma­tur­ing and evolv­ing as an or­gan­i­sa­tion.

"CANOC has tremen­dous po­ten­tial and it's our du­ty, re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and oblig­a­tion to de­liv­er on that."