T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) pres­i­dent Bri­an Lewis will put his fit­ness to the test when he walks the 2015 Trinidad In­ter­na­tion­al Marathon card­ed for Jan­u­ary 25 to raise aware­ness for the Ath­lete Wel­fare and Prepa­ra­tion Fund.Lewis is hop­ing to earn $500,000 ini­tial­ly to help the ath­letes. The main aim of the Fund is to as­sist ath­letes with their prepa­ra­tions for the 2024 Olympics.

At the TTOC head of­fice on Mon­day, Lewis, who wants T&T to win at least 10 gold medals by the 2024 Olympics spoke about the ini­tia­tive. Lewis said: "The path to Olympic suc­cess re­quires full time com­mit­ment and un­stint­ing ded­i­ca­tion. To be com­pet­i­tive, our elite and high per­for­mance ath­letes, both in in­di­vid­ual and team sports need to be able to ded­i­cate much more time and en­er­gy to their en­deav­ors. For this to hap­pen they need mon­ey."

The TTOC pres­i­dent added: "Win­ning a medal at the Olympics de­mands years of sac­ri­fice and sin­gle mind­ed fo­cus. Many of our top ath­letes are not fi­nan­cial­ly equipped to af­ford the time re­quired to re­al­ize their full po­ten­tial. Sim­ply put, with­out our fi­nan­cial sup­port, they can't be the best that they can be."Lewis said that ath­letes need as­sis­tance be­fore they com­pete. "As a na­tion, we have a his­to­ry of pro­vid­ing fi­nan­cial re­wards for our ath­letes af­ter they have suc­ceed­ed.

There are far too many un­told sto­ries of tal­ent­ed young men and women who, not for want of ef­fort, have had to give up their Olympic dream be­cause they did not have the fi­nan­cial sup­port to ded­i­cate them­selves ful­ly."Na­tion­al ath­letes will al­so be giv­en as­sis­tance for the Par­a­lympic and Com­mon­wealth Games to en­able them to train, re­cov­er and com­pete.

DE­TAILS OF FUND

*Di­rect sup­port (stipend) to cov­er day-to-day liv­ing ex­pens­es

*Medal bonus to re­ward suc­cess

*Health and Ac­ci­dent In­sur­ance: Pro­vid­ing world class med­ical sup­port for our top ath­letes is of para­mount im­por­tance.In­jury and ill­ness can threat­en an ath­lete's ca­reer if not iden­ti­fied and dealt with­quick­ly.

*In­tern­ships with Cor­po­rate T&T to pre­pare for life af­ter sport

*Lifeskills train­ing