An­drew Gioan­net­ti

New­ly-ap­point­ed pres­i­dent of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) Bri­an Lewis has vowed to fo­cus on the body's core val­ues and ex­tend it to all mem­ber na­tion­al sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions (NSO) with the vi­sion of self-sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

Lewis, who joined TTOC in 1997 won the elec­tion, 29 votes to 16 over his op­po­nent, Richard Young, a re­cent­ly re­tired bank­ing ex­ec­u­tive, on Mon­day. Lewis took over the port­fo­lio of out­go­ing pres­i­dent Lar­ry Ro­many for the post, the on­ly one of which was op­posed at the elec­tion.

David In­gle­field and Ter­ry Ali are the new vice-pres­i­dents, while An­nette Knott is the sec­re­tary. The ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers are Wen­dell Con­stan­tine, Dr Ian Hy­po­lite and Garvin War­wick, and the trustees, Ker­ston Coombs and for­mer TTOC pres­i­dent Dou­glas Ca­ma­cho. Pri­or to his elec­tion as pres­i­dent, Lewis served as the com­mit­tee's gen­er­al sec­re­tary. His task ahead is to im­ple­ment the fac­tors which con­sti­tut­ed his cam­paign.

Lewis said: "Pri­or to the elec­tion I met with the NSOs and asked what they cared about, what was their pas­sion. I made it clear my in­ten­tion was to made the TTOC more in­clu­sive. NSOs need to feel at­tached to the TTOC."

He said the TTOC al­ready had a good ex­ist­ing re­la­tion­ship with mem­ber NSOs, but a stronger one was re­quired for the pur­pose of strate­gic de­vel­op­ment for both par­ties.

Lewis con­grat­u­lat­ed the NSOs who suc­ceed­ed in ex­e­cut­ing a trans­par­ent and eth­i­cal elec­tion, which epit­o­mized those of which he stressed in his cam­paign. "At all times my aim is to keep with the dig­ni­ty and in­tegri­ty of the Olympic move­ment."

He said he nev­er did and nev­er will have the in­ten­tion of bring­ing the TTOC, or any sport­ing body in­to dis­re­pute de­spite what he de­scribed as "un­truths be­ing sug­gest­ed."

"Now the elec­tion is over, we (have to) fo­cus on mov­ing for­ward, re­gard­less of the vote count."

Lewis said on the day of the elec­tion he was con­vinced the mar­gin of vic­to­ry (or de­feat) would have been much clos­er, even at the start of the meet­ing. "I thought it was to be de­cid­ed by one or two votes," said Lewis, ad­mit­ting he was not a favourite to win the elec­tion at the start of the cam­paign.

A pri­ma­ry con­cern and that of which he de­clared in his cam­paign are the is­sues of de­vel­op­ment of a strate­gic mar­ket­ing ap­proach, in­clud­ing but not lim­it­ed to in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal sports mar­ket­ing, fundrais­ing and spon­sor­ship.