T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) is adamant that Dr Ian Hy­po­lite ful­filled the du­ties as Chef de Mis­sion for the 32-mem­ber T&T team that par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Olympic Games which was held in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, last month.

Dr Hy­po­lite, an Olympic coach and sport med­i­cine physi­cian, joined ES­PN to pro­vide stu­dio analy­sis dur­ing the track and field seg­ment of the Games, from Au­gust 12-21. He worked along­side ES­PN's team of ex­perts and Olympians in­clud­ing ES­PN FC and ES­P­N­cricin­fo com­men­ta­tor Alex­is Nunes and Eng­land Women's Crick­et World Cup cham­pi­on Isa Guha, the of­fi­cial hosts of the show, Ja­maica's Olympic 200 me­tres medal­list Grace Jack­son, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic's Olympic gold medal­list Fe­lix Sanchez, TV com­men­ta­tor and Olympic cham­pi­on Dwight Stones, for­mer Olympic swim­mer Janelle Atkin­son of Ja­maica and ES­PN's foot­ball ex­pert and for­mer goal­keep­er Sha­ka His­lop.

A re­lease sent yes­ter­day by the TTOC stat­ed that Dr Hy­po­lite in no way fell short in serv­ing as the main rep­re­sen­ta­tive and spokesper­son of Team TTO for the Games.

"The T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) has not­ed the sen­ti­ments and state­ments sur­round­ing the role of the Chef de Mis­sion at the re­cent­ly-con­clud­ed Rio Games 2016.

"The TTOC has fur­ther not­ed the spe­cif­ic ques­tions con­cern­ing the role of Dr Ian Hy­po­lite as Chef de Mis­sion for Team TTO and his role as an an­a­lyst on the in­au­gur­al Caribbean fo­cused cov­er­age of the Olympic Games.

"The TTOC con­firms that at no time dur­ing the four weeks of Team TTO's par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Rio Games, in­clud­ing the pre-games camp, did the Chef de Mis­sion ei­ther ab­di­cate his role or del­e­gate any of his du­ties.

"The TTOC there­fore af­firms that Dr Hy­po­lite dis­charged all of the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties as­signed to him as Chef de Mis­sion."

"The TTOC al­so wish­es to clar­i­fy that in the mat­ters re­lat­ed to the dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion of the TTO men's re­lay teams, the du­ty to lodge a protest with the In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee of­fi­cials, rest­ed with a spe­cif­ic team of­fi­cial, who dis­charged this du­ty ac­cord­ing to pro­to­col and that such a du­ty did not rest pri­mar­i­ly with the Chef de Mis­sion. We are al­so sat­is­fied that Dr Hy­po­lite main­tained on­go­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion with team of­fi­cials dur­ing and af­ter the dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion, en­sur­ing that all as­pects of the pro­ce­dures re­lat­ed to lodg­ing a protest against a dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion were in fact fol­lowed."

"The TTOC ap­pre­ci­ates that in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ed to the du­ties and pro­ce­dures of of­fi­cials sup­port­ing a coun­try's del­e­ga­tion may not rest in the pub­lic do­main and in light of the re­cent cir­cum­stances, the TTOC is pre­pared to bring more in­for­ma­tion to the pub­lic's at­ten­tion, as it re­lates to team of­fi­cials, as part of the TTOC's on­go­ing mar­ket­ing and brand trans­for­ma­tion agen­da.

"The TTOC thanks the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty for their on­go­ing sup­port and con­struc­tive in­volve­ment in the progress of achiev­ing ten or more Olympic gold medals by the year 2024."