Bri­an Lewis

Break­ing point. Trinidad and To­ba­go is at a cru­cial place.Peo­ple make de­ci­sions on the ba­sis of agen­das. It is about what is con­ve­nient and ex­pe­di­ent.It mat­ters not what the truth may be. Once it serves their own agen­da, that's it!Fair­ness and eq­ui­ty is de­pen­dent on in­ter­ests of those who be­lieve that mon­ey and more mon­ey makes the world go round and round.

Some are al­lowed the lib­er­ty to make mis­takes while oth­ers are not.What makes the dif­fer­ence? One can on­ly sur­mise. But what is cer­tain is it is nev­er what it seems.

As the Olympic Move­ment both here at home and glob­al­ly comes clos­er to the Au­gust 5 Rio 2016 Olympic Games open­ing cer­e­mo­ny, the pace of prepa­ra­tion quick­ens. Com­ing with it all is the mar­ket­ing cy­cle where­by cor­po­rate in­ter­est in the Olympics is build­ing to a crescen­do.Olympic Com­mit­tees world­wide are in ne­go­ti­a­tions that will im­pact rev­enue gen­er­a­tion.

The Olympic year phase al­ways brings with it new and old chal­lenges.There is no hid­ing the truth. Here in T&T there has to be some mech­a­nism in place to pro­mote a bet­ter sit­u­a­tion for sport or­gan­i­sa­tions as rights hold­ers.There are many op­por­tu­ni­ties to af­ford cit­i­zens a way to en­joy the Rio Olympics. Un­lock­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ties re­quire a will­ing­ness to en­gage those who have an in­ter­est.

The TTOC has to fig­ure out dif­fer­ent and new ways to cre­ate new Olympic fans and en­gage the loy­al ones. One gets a sense that the gen­er­al in­ter­est in the Olympics can grow. Cre­at­ing dif­fer­ent ways to en­gage prospec­tive part­ners with in­no­v­a­tive plans are im­por­tant, giv­en the changes in de­mo­graph­ics, in­clud­ing bring­ing fans to the dig­i­tal in­ter­sec­tion.

With Car­ni­val 2016 his­to­ry, it's full steam ahead as the TTOC cal­en­dar kicks in­to high gear.Qual­i­fiers for the Rio Olympics will pro­vide ath­letes with a shot at their Olympic dream in the next months.In all the fren­zy, it is nec­es­sary to stay fo­cused on what will make a dif­fer­ence.

At Olympic House no day is the same. Add to the in tray the Zi­ka virus along with the usu­al vari­a­tions of prob­lems to be solved, the Olympic road show is on its way.Let's not for­get in all the heady stuff that the TTOC good gov­er­nance code ini­tia­tive re­mains a fo­cus. Get­ting it done and done right by end of April is def­i­nite­ly on the cards.

The find­ings and re­ports com­plet­ed fol­low­ing Good Gov­er­nance Week No­vem­ber 2-7 last year will short­ly be cir­cu­lat­ed to all stake­hold­ers.

The re­port, writ­ten by pro­fes­sor Leigh Robin­son of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Stir­ling sets out the find­ings of the large num­ber of dis­cus­sions had with ad­min­is­tra­tors, ath­letes, mem­bers of the me­dia, and gov­ern­ment. It sets out the con­text, high­lights a num­ber of is­sues to do with gov­er­nance of NSOs and pro­pos­es a way for­ward.

Good Gov­er­nance, ath­lete cen­tred and mar­ket ori­ent­ed are the three strate­gic pil­lars dri­ving the TTOC for­ward. Turn­ing back is not an op­tion on the march to 10 or more Olympic Gold medals by the year 2024.

Bri­an Lewis is pres­i­dent of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC). The views ex­pressed are not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of the Olympic Com­mit­tee. Sup­port #10 Golds24 Ath­lete Wel­fare and Prepa­ra­tion Fund. Pur­chase your Team TTO tee shirt from any branch of The Fan Club.