Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley com­mend­ed mem­bers of Trinidad and To­ba­go's Olympic team who he said was “rep­re­sent­ing well in heart and spir­it” in the Olympic Games cur­rent­ly un­der­way in Tokyo, Japan.

And while he con­grat­u­lat­ed the Ja­maican team for car­ry­ing the Caribbean flag, he sug­gest­ed that this coun­try needs to do more at the pri­ma­ry lev­el to strength­en our Olympic per­for­mance. He ad­dressed the per­for­mance and well-be­ing of the 50-mem­ber Trinidad and To­ba­go Olympic team at Sat­ur­day’s press con­fer­ence.

“I think Trinidad and To­ba­go is well rep­re­sent­ed and as much as we would have liked to have come home with a bas­ket of medals those who car­ried our flag did so with pride. We are a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ed in those new ones who have test­ed pos­i­tive, but we are be­ing told that they are be­ing man­aged.”

No­tably men­tioned was Michelle-Lee Ahye who missed out on a place in the women's 100 me­tres fi­nal af­ter pro­duc­ing a sea­son-best run of 11.00 sec­onds. The T&T sprint­er missed the place­ment by on­ly one-thou­sandth of a sec­ond to Britain's Daryll Nei­ta.

Dr Row­ley said that he was “dis­ap­point­ed that Michelle didn’t get in­to the fi­nals and when you didn’t get in by one thou­sand of a sec­ond that sounds like steel band judg­ing to me–she did us proud.”

He al­so com­mend­ed the Ja­maican team who he said was “punch­ing well above their weight class,” par­tic­u­lar­ly the Ja­maican women who he said are car­ry­ing the Caribbean flag.

In the women's 100m fi­nal, Ja­maican Elaine Thomp­son-Her­ah smashed a 33-year-old Olympic record as she blazed to vic­to­ry, suc­cess­ful­ly de­fend­ing her sprint crown at the Olympics on Sat­ur­day.

Cherelle Thompson, of Trinidad and Tobago, swims in a women's 50-metre freestyle heat at the 2020 Summer Olympics, on Friday.

AP/ GREGORY BULL

Thomp­son-Her­ah, run­ning out of lane four, trailed coun­try­woman Shelly-Ann Fras­er-Pryce (lane five), close the mid-way stage be­fore mak­ing a late surge to cross the line in 10.61 sec­onds to eclipse the old record of 10.62 set by the late Amer­i­can Flo­rence Grif­fith Joyn­er in Seoul.

The 29-year-old Thomp­son-Her­ah led a Ja­maican sweep of the podi­um po­si­tions as Fras­er-Pryce,34, won sil­ver in 10.74 and Sh­er­ic­ka Jack­son bagged the bronze in a per­son­al best 10.76.

It was the first time the top three fin­ish­ers in a women’s 100m fi­nal had dipped be­low 10.80 sec­onds and was the sec­ond time Ja­maica had swept the top three spots in a women’s Olympic sprint medal race.

When asked how he felt T&T could im­prove the per­for­mance of our ath­letes to match that of team Ja­maica, the Prime Min­is­ter said sports de­vel­op­ment should be­gin from as ear­ly as the pri­ma­ry lev­el.

“What they have is a tra­di­tion in a world that re­ceives div­i­dends in that tra­di­tion. The in­ter­school sports has been huge and has been huge since the ear­ly ’70s and out of that sys­tem comes scout­ing, peo­ple be­ing se­lect­ed ear­ly in their teenage per­for­mances, and they end up in the Unit­ed States.”

He said while T&T out­ranks Ja­maica in terms of sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties and gov­ern­ment sup­port, oth­er de­vel­op­men­tal ar­eas should be ad­dressed.

“If we are fail­ing in any area, it is that area where we don’t have the ex­po­sure and com­pe­ti­tion in the in­ter­school. We have a greater ca­pac­i­ty than Ja­maica to do that, we have more sec­ondary schools we have more top-class play­grounds. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, it is not re­flect­ing it­self in the com­pe­ti­tion that dri­ves the teenagers to the at­ten­tion of the scouts.”

The Prime Min­is­ter said he be­lieves the coun­try would make an im­proved show­ing “once our ath­letes end up in the com­pet­i­tive col­le­giate sys­tem,” how­ev­er, he said T&T has the po­ten­tial to strength­en its per­for­mance if train­ing starts with ath­letes at the school age.