KRISTY RAM­NAR­INE

Re­porter

kristy.ram­nar­ine@cnc3.co.tt

Lovie San­tana-Duke’s mantra is: “Put God first.”

It guides and in­spires the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) se­nior ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fi­cer who is serv­ing as chef de mis­sion for the Ju­ly 26–Au­gust 11 Paris 2024 Olympic Games, a po­si­tion she’s held be­fore but one she nev­er an­tic­i­pat­ed she would achieve at the be­gin­ning of her ca­reer.

“I do not come from a sport­ing back­ground. I start­ed work­ing at Caribbean Games 2009 and from there I branched over in­to the TTOC as an ex­ec­u­tive as­sis­tant to the pres­i­dent,” San­tana-Duke re­vealed.

“Then I was pro­mot­ed to se­nior ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fi­cer. The first games I at­tend­ed was the Com­mon­wealth Games in Glas­gow, as an ad­min sup­port.”

As the say­ing goes, the rest is his­to­ry. San­tana-Duke kept reach­ing for the stars, gain­ing a wealth of ex­pe­ri­ence with T&T con­tin­gents at var­i­ous games.

She was ap­point­ed chef de mis­sion for the 2018 Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean Games in Colom­bia, as well as the 2022 Com­mon­wealth Games in Birm­ing­ham. She was al­so ap­point­ed sis­ter chef de mis­sion for the Rio 2006 Olympics, then Chef de Mis­sion for Tokyo 2020, which was held in 2021 due to COVID-19, fol­lowed by the Bei­jing 2022 Win­ter Olympics.

“I em­brace it, I love it and it is a joy to serve with the Olympic com­mit­tee,” she said.

“For me, what cap­tured me is stand­ing in a sta­di­um and hear­ing your an­them play; there is no word to de­scribe that feel­ing. The pride, the joy, the ex­cite­ment that more or less mo­ti­vat­ed me to give my all to games and games op­er­a­tion on the whole.”

San­tana-Duke cred­its for­mer TTOC Pres­i­dent Bri­an Lewis and Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al An­nette Knott for shap­ing her jour­ney.

“They and our pres­i­dent Di­ane Hen­der­son are a ma­jor sup­port to where I am now in terms of the growth, the ca­pac­i­ty build­ing and the ex­pe­ri­ence,” she said

The 2024 Paris Olympics of­fi­cial­ly opened on Fri­day and San­tana-Duke is pro­vid­ing lead­er­ship for the na­tion­al del­e­ga­tion of ath­letes and of­fi­cials in the French cap­i­tal.

She ex­plained: “When you are ap­point­ed chef de mis­sion you are lit­er­al­ly in charge of the en­tire del­e­ga­tion, you are on call 24/7. The process does not start with your se­lec­tion. There is a process that takes place be­fore the se­lec­tion of the chef with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion be­fore it is made pub­lic. The work ac­tu­al­ly starts about two years be­fore the games. There is a lot of ac­tiv­i­ty in­volved.

“You have to en­sure that your ath­letes are in a frame of mind to com­pete at the high­est lev­el. You lit­er­al­ly cater to their en­tire need when it comes to game time.

“Apart from be­ing chef I al­so have my re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as an em­ploy­ee of the TTOC.”

While in Paris, San­tana-Duke will be away from her very close-knit fam­i­ly.

“Usu­al­ly when I re­turn from a game I try to take two to three days, if avail­able, with my fam­i­ly, just to have that time with my fam­i­ly be­cause I am a very fam­i­ly-ori­ent­ed per­son. You can on­ly imag­ine how be­ing away for so long, how that would be,” she said

Af­ter the down­time, it’s back in­to the stream of things as the TTOC has a very packed cal­en­dar of events.

“Aside from the Olympics there are dif­fer­ent games,” San­tana-Duke said.

“Whether I am chef or not, I am one of the peo­ple who works on games man­age­ment. I do all the prepa­ra­tion pri­or to the games, whether I am go­ing or not. We have a qua­dren­ni­al that is full of games and the day-to-day run­ning of the TTOC.”

San­tana-Duke be­lieves her ac­com­plish­ments would not have been pos­si­ble with­out her faith in God.

“Any­thing that my hands are in­volved with, or any­thing I have a part to play in, there is al­ways a silent prayer,” she said.

“I am very much high on hav­ing that peace of mind and en­sur­ing that I put God in the cen­tre of it all.”

Ten men and sev­en women are rep­re­sent­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go in three sports, ath­let­ics, cy­cling, and swim­ming at the Paris Olympics.