Nicholas Clarke

The Min­istry of Sport has launched a new pro­gramme, en­ti­tled the Podi­um Push, aimed at pro­vid­ing elite ath­letes with the best prepa­ra­tion pos­si­ble for next year's Rio Olympics. This was re­vealed dur­ing a func­tion held in recog­ni­tion of the coun­try's ath­letes at the Hilton Ball­room in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

Speak­ing on be­half of Min­is­ter of Sport Brent San­cho, who was un­able to at­tend, di­rec­tor of phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion Gabre-Je­su Mc­Tair said the pro­gramme was de­signed to en­sure the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee's aim of win­ning 10 gold medals by 2024 could be re­alised.

"Pro­vid­ing fund­ing to take our ath­letes to the Olympics is not enough. Get­ting there is not the chal­lenge, but fin­ish­ing in the top three. That re­quires ex­tra ef­fort from the ath­letes, coach­es, sup­port teams and the Min­istry of Sports," said Mc­Tair as he read from the San­cho's pre­pared state­ment. "I am ask­ing var­i­ous na­tion­al sport­ing gov­ern­ing bod­ies to rec­om­mend the ath­letes who they feel are podi­um ready. In oth­er words, those ath­letes who won't just com­pete, but those who are in the top 20 in the world in their dis­ci­pline. These are the ath­letes who we feel have a re­al chance of fin­ish­ing in the gold, sil­ver or bronze po­si­tions."

The func­tion was at­tend­ed by dozens of lo­cal ath­letes, in­clud­ing mem­bers of the CPL-win­ning T&T Red Steel, the 48-medal win­ning Spe­cial Olympics team, the Pan Amer­i­can del­e­ga­tion, and the na­tion­al blind crick­et team.

Pres­i­dent of the TTOC Bri­an Lewis called on the coun­try to take sport more se­ri­ous­ly by cre­at­ing con­di­tions un­der which ath­letes could thrive.

"I re­mind every­one that ac­tions speak loud­er than words. There are so many things that still need to be done for our ath­letes and it's not on­ly about mon­ey. There are sim­ple things. We still have a cor­po­rate cul­ture where rep­re­sent­ing your coun­try is not con­sid­ered a na­tion­al ser­vice and our ath­letes have to take no-pay leave or time from their va­ca­tion to rep­re­sent their coun­try. It is a re­al­i­ty that for many peo­ple in­volved in sport, they have to make those sac­ri­fices 80 per­cent of time," he said. "If in the wider com­mu­ni­ty, sport is not seen as key de­vel­op­ment pil­lar in the fu­ture vi­sion for this coun­try sim­i­lar­ly as it is done in coun­try's such a Sin­ga­pore, then notwith­stand­ing the best in­ten­tions, ded­i­ca­tion and com­mit­ment of sport stake­hold­ers, we will all con­tin­ue to strug­gle. Sport can make a pow­er­ful dif­fer­ence to so­ci­ety and I urge the coun­try and its de­ci­sion mak­ers to take sport se­ri­ous­ly."

Mean­while T&T Red Steel cap­tain said he had been per­son­al­ly in­spired by the achieve­ments of the Spe­cial Olympics team.

"They are the re­al he­roes of our coun­try. To do what they do, words cant' ex­plain. I think they give us more ap­pre­ci­a­tion of what we have and make us re­alise we should nev­er take any­thing for grant­ed," he said. "Maybe one day our man­age­ment can ac­tu­al­ly get the Red Steel team to do some kind of games with those Spe­cial Olympians."