The Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers (TKR) are set to re­ceive this coun­try’s sec­ond-high­est ho­n­our, the Cha­co­nia Medal gold, at to­day’s an­nu­al Na­tion­al Awards Cer­e­mo­ny at Pres­i­dent’s House.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Javelin World Cham­pi­on Keshorn Wal­cott and TKR stand-outs, cap­tain Nicholas Pooran and Ke­iron Pol­lard, have been named na­tion­al sport am­bas­sadors, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced at a re­cep­tion for the ath­letes at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

Un­der the Na­tion­al Re­wards and In­cen­tives Pol­i­cy frame­work im­ple­ment­ed in 2018, both Wal­cott and 400m World Cham­pi­onships sil­ver medal­list Jereem “The Dream” Richards are al­so en­ti­tled to a to­tal of $750,000: $500,000 for World Cham­pi­onships gold and $250,000 for sil­ver. The Prime Min­is­ter an­nounced they would re­ceive their due.

Ac­cord­ing to the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent, “The Cha­co­nia Medal may be award­ed to any per­son (cit­i­zen as well as non-cit­i­zen) who has per­formed long and mer­i­to­ri­ous ser­vice to Trinidad and To­ba­go and who pro­mote the na­tion­al wel­fare or strength­en com­mu­ni­ty spir­it.”

Each re­cip­i­ent—in this case, the en­tire TKR or­gan­i­sa­tion, rep­re­sent­ed by Pooran at to­day’s awards—will be­come a mem­ber of the Dis­tin­guished So­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go, of which the Pres­i­dent serves as Chan­cel­lor.

Ad­dress­ing an au­di­ence which al­so in­clud­ed sev­er­al mem­bers of Cab­i­net, Wal­cott, Richards, re­cent­ly ap­point­ed sport am­bas­sador and TKR head coach Dwayne Bra­vo, and TKR squad mem­bers Sunil Nar­ine, Yan­nic Cari­ah, Joshua Da Sil­va, Ter­rance Hinds, and Daren Bra­vo, among oth­ers, the Prime Min­is­ter said it was a well-timed, proud mo­ment for the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty at large.

“You’ve made us very proud,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said. “Sport unites a na­tion, and I think the en­tire na­tion was unit­ed with all of you when you went off and you did your du­ty. So we thank you all very, very much.”

Speak­ing di­rect­ly to TKR’s play­ers and staff, the Prime Min­is­ter showed her par­ti­san side. “I shouldn’t say it, but I will: I’m glad you won that match in Guyana,” to rap­tur­ous ap­plause.

“I’m prob­a­bly old­er than all of you and will tell you, age is just a num­ber,” she added. “It is your hope, your will­ing­ness, your re­silience, and your sus­tain­abil­i­ty, and you’ve shown that. You had ex­pe­ri­ence and younger ones and made Trinidad and To­ba­go so proud.”

An emo­tion­al Pooran, who in his first sea­son as TKR cap­tain led the fran­chise to its record-ex­tend­ing fifth Caribbean Pre­mier League ti­tle by three wick­ets on Sun­day, said the awards held par­tic­u­lar, per­son­al sig­nif­i­cance.

“I went through ad­ver­si­ty where I al­most lost my life, and I felt like I wasn’t go­ing to play crick­et again,” the wick­et-keep­er bats­man said. “I al­most lost my legs, doc­tors said I may not walk or run again. Thir­teen years have passed, and it was worth all the sweat, tears, hard work, and sac­ri­fice.”

He thanked head coach Bra­vo for giv­ing him the op­por­tu­ni­ty, adding, to the Prime Min­is­ter, “This will go a long way not on­ly for us but al­so for our fam­i­lies and the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs Phillip Watts trav­elled to Guyana to sup­port TKR in Sun­day’s CPL fi­nal against the Guyana Ama­zon War­riors in Prov­i­dence, Guyana, and said the coun­try’s first four sport am­bas­sadors since the pre­vi­ous con­tracts ex­pired in 2017 have a big first as­sign­ment.

“Sport tourism is a bil­lion-dol­lar in­dus­try just wait­ing for Trinidad and To­ba­go to tap in­to,” Watts ex­plained. “So I’m go­ing to have these sport am­bas­sadors work very close­ly with the Min­istry of Sport and the gov­ern­ment to dri­ve sport tourism as of to­day.”

The PM added that the re­cent­ly re­fur­bished North East­ern Re­gion­al Mul­ti­pur­pose Sport Fa­cil­i­ty on Ojoe Road in San­gre Grande will be re­named in Wal­cott’s ho­n­our.

The 1,600 square me­tre fa­cil­i­ty, re­opened on Sep­tem­ber 15 at a cost of $70 mil­lion, has two in­door courts and can host a va­ri­ety of sports, in­clud­ing foot­ball, vol­ley­ball, bas­ket­ball, net­ball, mar­tial arts, ta­ble ten­nis, and gym­nas­tics. It has been de­scribed as an in­cu­ba­tor for sport.

Thir­teen years ago, un­der the then Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment, Wal­cott re­ceived the Or­der of Trinidad and To­ba­go, a Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion house, and one mil­lion dol­lars for his Lon­don 2012 Olympic Games gold medal at age 19.

Af­ter wait­ing an ath­lete’s life­time for the elu­sive World Cham­pi­onship gold medal, the To­co-born leg­end ap­pears ready to grab the op­por­tu­ni­ty to guide an­oth­er gen­er­a­tion of this coun­try’s sports­men and women to new heights.

“It’s been one long jour­ney, and be­ing here 13 years lat­er, it feels good. It doesn’t just feel good to be able to wear this medal; it feels good to know that all the ups and downs and all the dif­fer­ent things that I’ve been through as an ath­lete, I can still come back here to­day and say that I’m a world cham­pi­on,” Wal­cott said.

“Now that I’m al­so be­ing ho­n­oured to be a sport am­bas­sador, I’m go­ing to put my best foot for­ward the same way I put my best foot for­ward on the mon­do. I’m go­ing to do the same to rep­re­sent the coun­try in every­thing I do, as I am very pas­sion­ate when it comes to the younger ath­letes. I think this is a great op­por­tu­ni­ty for me to step up and make a big dif­fer­ence.”

Richards con­grat­u­lat­ed his Tokyo Games room­mate and cred­it­ed Wal­cott with spurring him to his first in­di­vid­ual World Cham­pi­onships medal since 2017.

“That lev­el of great­ness mo­ti­vat­ed me to go out and get a medal too,” the Point Fortin res­i­dent said.

“When I was warm­ing up, Keshorn was throw­ing, and it put that type of good pres­sure on me that I al­so need­ed to do well for my coun­try. Our coun­try de­serves great­ness. Our coun­try is great­ness.”