Sean Nero

Bri­an Lewis, pres­i­dent of the T&T Com­mon­wealth Games As­so­ci­a­tion (T&TC­GA) is de­fend­ing con­cerns raised from sev­er­al quar­ters in the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty re­gard­ing the num­ber of of­fi­cials that are ac­com­pa­ny­ing ath­letes to the Com­mon­wealth Games which starts on Wednes­day in Glas­gow, Scot­land.

The T&TC­GA has ap­point­ed 47 of­fi­cials to as­sist more than 100 ath­letes.

The team of­fi­cials com­pris­es ex­er­cise phys­i­ol­o­gists, sports nu­tri­tion­ists, doc­tors, ath­let­ic train­ers, chi­ro­prac­tors, team man­agers, coach­es, as well as Dr Ian Hy­po­lite, the con­tin­gent's chef de mis­sion, An­nette Knott, sec­re­tary of the TTC­GA, who is the as­sis­tant chef-de-mis­sion and Lewis.

"T&T claims to be a sport lov­ing pub­lic and they watch a lot of in­ter­na­tion­al events, but still hold the view that sports psy­chol­o­gist, sports nu­tri­tion­ist, ath­let­ic train­ers, chi­ro­prac­tors, ex­er­cise phys­i­ol­o­gist and all of these con­di­tion­ing ex­perts are un­nec­es­sary. If peo­ple feel that it is un­nec­es­sary, then we are in the wrong busi­ness and we are not talk­ing about high per­for­mance sport. Then we are do­ing our ath­letes a dis­ser­vice. The TTOC/CGA has no in­ten­tion of do­ing our ath­letes a dis­ser­vice," said Lewis.

"All over the world, suc­cess dri­ve suc­cess. I am con­vinced that for the TTOC/CGA, Na­tion­al Sport­ing Or­gan­i­sa­tions (NSO), the ath­letes and coach­es that at­tend ma­jor events such as the Com­mon­wealth Games, go to per­form and not just to par­tic­i­pate. T&T ath­letes have passed the stage of just be­ing hap­py to bare­ly qual­i­fy. We've gone past that stage. That is no longer an ac­cept­able po­si­tion. We are go­ing to these Games to per­form. It's not about go­ing for a joy ride or a va­ca­tion. It's about per­for­mance. I ex­pect qual­i­ty per­for­mances."

Lewis said Dr Hy­po­lite had the ex­pe­ri­ence hav­ing at­tend­ed sev­er­al high lev­el games in the past and he un­der­stands what is re­quired to bring home gold by cre­at­ing the right en­vi­ron­ment from the ad­min­is­tra­tive side of things.

"In the past, peo­ple com­plained about all the of­fi­cials go­ing and there are still peo­ple that have that view. If they pay at­ten­tion to what is hap­pen­ing in the mod­ern en­vi­ron­ment, you will see that sup­port staff is cru­cial. And in many ways, T&T still have a long way to go. Sim­ple things like video analy­sis I think should be part of the team. There are lots of things we need to do, but it's a build­ing process. We are al­so re­view­ing how we con­struct med­ical ser­vices for ath­letes. For me the fo­cus has to be on the podi­um and how do we en­sure that our ath­letes have what they need to per­form at their best on the day, to de­liv­er their full po­ten­tial," Lewis ex­plained.

He added: "We are fo­cused as a CGA and our part­ner­ship with the Michael John­son Per­for­mance Cen­tre in the USA and BPTT to com­pli­ment the train­ing pro­grammes that the var­i­ous coach­es have for the var­i­ous ath­letes. It's all about work­ing as a team. The Com­mon­wealth Games still re­mains very much an im­por­tant event for T&T. With­in re­cent time the Com­mon­wealth Games were held in No­vem­ber or around that pe­ri­od or like in 2006, in March-April. So it has been quite a while since we have been able, on pa­per, to go in­to the Games with what should be a very strong track and field con­tin­gent. That is re­al­ly a big boast for us. We have the op­por­tu­ni­ty this time around be­cause the Games are in Ju­ly. It will be a very in­ter­est­ing Games and I am very op­ti­mistic that we would see some huge per­for­mances."