Nass­er Khan

Col­umn cour­tesy First Cit­i­zens

This se­ries, spon­sored by First Cit­i­zens, pro­files some of our he­roes and pi­o­neers. In this in­stal­ment we note some of our sport­ing he­roes.

The he­roes and pi­o­neers of T&T are those who have made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to our coun­try's de­vel­op­ment in the var­i­ous fields of hu­man en­deav­our such as Agri­cul­ture, Busi­ness, Com­mu­ni­ty So­cial Work and Vol­un­teerism, Cul­ture and the Arts, Eco­nom­ics, Ed­u­ca­tion, En­gi­neer­ing and Ar­chi­tec­ture, En­vi­ron­ment, Fash­ion and Beau­ty Pageants, Law, Med­i­cine, Oil, Pol­i­tics, Pub­lic Ser­vice, Ra­dio and Tele­vi­sion, Re­li­gion, Sci­ence, Sports, Trade Union­ism, Writ­ing/Jour­nal­ism.

Our abun­dant sport­ing tal­ents for such a small na­tion as ours are con­tin­u­al­ly on show on the world stage. Names like crick­eters Sunil Nar­ine, Dwayne Bra­vo, Samuel Badree, and Kieron Pol­lard are cur­rent­ly house­hold names glob­al­ly. Bri­an Lara is still very much the same al­though his crick­et play­ing days are over as is foot­baller Dwight Yorke. Among oth­er big names in var­i­ous sport­ing dis­ci­plines, past and present in no par­tic­u­lar or­der, all still with us that most of us should be fa­mil­iar with are: Stephen Ames, Ato Boldon, George Bovell, Machel Ce­de­nio, Hase­ly Craw­ford, Je­hue Gor­don, Lalonde Gor­don, Claude Noel, Njisane Phillips, Ren­ny Quow, Jereem Richards, Akeem Stew­art, Leslie Stew­art, Richard Thomp­son, Keshorn Wal­cott, Jar­rin Solomon, Michelle-Lee Ahye, Meris­sa Aguilleira, Anisa Mo­hammed, Wen­dell Mot­t­ley, Sha­ka His­lop, Marc Burns, Ke­ston Bled­man, Em­manuel Cal­len­der, Mans­ingh Amars­ingh/ta­ble ten­nis, Roger Gib­bon, Gene Samuel, 'Granny' Luces, Son­ny Ramd­hin, Deryck Mur­ray.

There are those who are no longer with us but re­main in the minds of sports afi­ciona­dos and his­to­ri­ans, among them: Michael Agos­ti­ni/ath­let­ics, Ray Apol­lon/wrestling, Mac­Don­ald Bai­ley/ath­let­ics, H A Clarke/box­ing pro­mot­er, Learie Con­stan­tine/crick­et, Man­nie Dookhie/ath­let­ics, Leslie King/cy­cling, Christo­pher Forde/body build­ing, Joey Kauff­man/swim­ming, Ken Charles/pow­er boat­ing, Lystra Lewis/net­ball, Colvin Patrick/walk­ing, Jean Pierre/net­ball, Clif­ford Roach/crick­et, Giselle Sa­landy/box­ing, and Rod­ney Wilkes/weightlift­ing.

Keep on shin­ing T&T!

Pro­files on these and oth­er of our he­roes & pi­o­neers can be ob­tained from the free down­load­able e-book at http://www.sa­faripub­li­ca­tions.com/firstc­i­t­i­zen­stt/he­roe­spro­filestt/ , cour­tesy First Cit­i­zens,

or hard copies at ourheroestt@gmail.com. Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 370 in­di­vid­u­als are pro­filed in the var­i­ous cat­e­gories of en­deav­our.