Team Hope stepped up its prepa­ra­tions for the Rain­bow Cup Traithlon on May 28 when it dom­i­nat­ed the sev­enth mi­ni-duathlon (run/cy­cle) and Sa­van­nah One-Lap mi­ni-Duathlon (run/cy­cling) re­cent­ly.Over­all, Team Hope which had 16 par­tic­i­pants reg­is­tered for the event took five first place fin­ish­es in­clud­ing Jen­na Ross, who se­cured the women's Open ti­tle with a time of 46.23.2 min­utes to break last year's record while her team-mate Sa­lome Bu­glass was fifth.

Oth­er team mem­bers with sol­id per­for­mances were Day­na Bayne (16-19 women), Chris­tiane Farah (20-29 women'), Priya Gomes (30-39 women) and Nigel Wall (50-59 women) who all won their age-groups while Daisy Malek-Sha­did was sec­ond in the women's 30-39 cat­e­go­ry at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah on March 27.For the May 28 event, Team Hope sta­b­lised by the non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion T&T Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Ther­a­py As­so­ci­a­tion (T&TO­TA) has part­nered with Rain­bow Triathlon Club and T&T Aquat­ics to cre­ate a fun project that com­bines health and fit­ness with a fund-rais­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty.

So far 50 or­di­nary peo­ple have signed up to train and com­plete the Triathlon with the aim of rais­ing $4,000 each so that peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties can have ac­cess to oc­cu­pa­tion­al ther­a­py in or­der to achieve their fullest po­ten­tial.Each ath­lete is paired with an ho­n­oured team-mate (a per­son with spe­cial needs) for whom the ath­lete will do the triathlon.This will be the sec­ond ven­ture for Team Hope, fol­low­ing their suc­cess­ful ini­tial run in 2008/2009 in which 40 or­di­nary peo­ple par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Rain­bow Triathlon in 2009 and raised more than $270,000 for the Caribbean Kids & Fam­i­lies Ther­a­py Or­gan­i­sa­tion (CK­FTO).

Team Hope is al­so ex­pect­ed to com­pete to trav­el to To­ba­go to com­plete a dry-run of the course and meet some ho­n­oured team-mates on Sat­ur­day April 9 fol­lowed by an in­tense train­ing ses­sion at Mac­queripe Bay on Sat­ur­day April 30.The T&TO­TA al­so ex­pressed its grat­i­tude for the sup­port giv­en by gold spon­sor, At­lantic and bronze spon­sors Gatorade and Blue Wa­ters.T&TO­TA was found­ed in 2004 to pro­mote qual­i­ty oc­cu­pa­tion­al ther­a­py treat­ment for peo­ple with spe­cial needs who are usu­al­ly for­got­ten in our so­ci­ety.

Oc­cu­pa­tion­al ther­a­pists work with peo­ple of all ages who have a dis­abil­i­ty or in­jury that pre­vents them from par­tic­i­pat­ing in their every­day ac­tiv­i­ties.And through Team Hope, T&TO­TA plans to raise pub­lic aware­ness of the need for oc­cu­pa­tion­al ther­a­py ser­vices lo­cal­ly to cre­ate in­formed am­bas­sadors for peo­ple with spe­cial needs and to raise enough funds to sup­port re­cruit­ment and ed­u­ca­tion of oc­cu­pa­tion­al ther­a­pists for T&T.