Min­is­ter of Sports and Youth Af­fairs Dar­ryl Smith is en­thu­si­as­tic about T&T's chances at the com­ing Olympic Games in Rio de Janiero, Brazil next year as well as hav­ing the "So­ca War­riors" qual­i­fy for the World Cup in 2018.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Smith said he was re­al­ly pleased with the work of na­tion­al foot­ball coach Stephen Hart and felt that the coun­try has a great chance of qual­i­fy­ing for the World Cup for yet an­oth­er time. He is al­so eye­ing a num­ber of medals at the Olympics and is as op­ti­mistic as T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) pres­i­dent Bri­an Lewis, who ex­pressed the be­lief that T&T will win ten or more Olympic gold medals.

Smith, who is known for his hard work­ing na­ture at the Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, has promised that a de­ci­sion will be made on the in­com­plete Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um in Tarou­ba be­fore his term of of­fice came to an end.

He did not vis­it the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um dur­ing his tour of the sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties but said he will have to do so very soon.

"I have nev­er been to the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um and it is on­ly when I go there then I will know what has to be done. I will have to get the en­gi­neers and all the nec­es­sary peo­ple with me be­fore that vis­it," Smith said.

Smith said life at his min­istry was now re­turn­ing to a state of nor­mal­cy fol­low­ing the stint of the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment and said all will be done to en­sure that ath­letes get the re­quired as­sis­tance they need to per­form at the top lev­el.

He told the Guardian his aim now was to clean up sports in T&T and get cor­po­rate cit­i­zens to sup­port it once again.

On­ly re­cent­ly Smith made a tour of the new Aquat­ic Cen­tre and Ten­nis Fa­cil­i­ty in Tacarigua and the Cy­cle­drome in Cou­va to de­ter­mine their state of readi­ness for com­pe­ti­tion ahead of the Olympics. How­ev­er he said a lot still need­ed to be done be­fore the fa­cil­i­ties can be opened of­fi­cial­ly for ac­tion.

"I re­al­ly need to get the ath­letes in­side those fa­cil­i­ties as soon as pos­si­ble so work will con­tin­ue at a pace to try and achieve this," Smith said. He added that ten­ders for a main­te­nance con­trac­tor will be sent out soon be­fore the com­ple­tion of the fa­cil­i­ties as it was equal­ly im­por­tant to keep them well kept.

WAL­TER AL­IBEY