Let's be hon­est. Team T&T’s score­card in the just con­clud­ed Tokyo Olympic Games reads ‘F’.

As much as we wished dif­fer­ent­ly, our over­all show­ing was a fail­ure when com­pared to oth­er Games, as for the first time since 1992, we left with­out a medal of any colour.

There's no ques­tion that our ath­letes went out there to win. We wit­nessed glow­ing mo­ments and en­cour­age­ments for the fu­ture. They tried and we're hap­py they did. They flew our flag from the heart. They de­serve our grat­i­tude.

How­ev­er, the ques­tion re­mains, why, even though to­geth­er we as­pired, to­geth­er we did not achieve.

On the one hand, we can all for­get about it and lim­it our re­spons­es to “good ef­fort guys”, “you did your best”, and “we win some, we lose some”.

On the oth­er hand, we can in­sist that those re­spon­si­ble for the over­all de­vel­op­ment and suc­cess of our ath­letes give us some an­swers.

The an­swers must come from the Min­is­ter of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Sham­fa Cud­joe, the ad­min­is­tra­tors, the Olympic Com­mit­tee, the coach­es and the ath­letes them­selves.

We need not look much fur­ther than out­side the Caribbean in as­sess­ing the strengths of oth­ers.

Cu­ba topped the re­gion with sev­en gold, three sil­ver and five bronze. The Ba­hamas won two gold medals, Grena­da got a bronze, and Ja­maica, four gold, one sil­ver and four bronze medals. Team T&T re­turns emp­ty-hand­ed and we need to know why.

Some have ar­gued that ath­letes were placed on train­ing tra­jec­to­ries that would have led them to peak in 2020 when the Olympics were orig­i­nal­ly due. The sug­ges­tion is that due to the post­pone­ment, our ath­letes went to the games in less than ide­al con­di­tions.

It’s not an easy sell, giv­en that this blan­kets all glob­al ath­letes and re­quired prop­er man­age­ment to ad­just sched­ules and train­ing regimes ac­cord­ing­ly. Did we make the right ad­just­ments and if not, why not?

Jereem Richards hint­ed at an­oth­er prob­lem - the sup­port base for ath­letes - in an In­sta­gram post af­ter the 200 me­tres fi­nal in which he crossed the line be­hind all oth­er run­ners.

He stat­ed: “From run­ning in the road and strug­gling to find some­where to train all 2020 to mak­ing an Olympic Fi­nals and fin­ished 8th fastest in the World in 2021 Ain’t God Great!!!”

Richards’ res­olute spir­it is laud­able, but again, the Min­istry and Olympic Com­mit­tee have ques­tions to an­swer. Were the shut­downs as­so­ci­at­ed with COVID-19 the cause of Richards hav­ing to train in the road?

If so, were there no al­ter­na­tives to en­sure his ac­cess to prop­er train­ing in the lead-up to the Olympics? Who man­aged Richards and why did this hap­pen?

Richards was one of three ath­letes who re­ceived a com­bined sum of $450,000 as part of the Elite Ath­lete As­sis­tance Pro­gramme in April this year, just four months be­fore the start of the Games. But was he and the oth­er ath­letes giv­en prop­er fi­nan­cial sup­port be­fore that?

Those are just some unan­swered ques­tions but there are many.

What was our strate­gic plan­ning? What are our scout­ing pro­ce­dures to groom oth­er ath­letes for ex­cel­lence? Are the coach­es we hire good enough? Are our ath­letes ex­posed to enough com­pe­ti­tions? And of course, what can we learn from Ja­maica?

Fe­male sprint­er, Michelle-Lee Ahye ex­pressed frus­tra­tion when an­oth­er daugh­ter of the soil, rap artiste Nic­ki Mi­naj open­ly sup­port­ed Ja­maican ath­letes on so­cial me­dia while the T&T run­ners were bat­tling for spots in the fi­nals and on the podi­ums.

To this we al­so ask, are we sat­is­fied with the mea­sures in place to mo­ti­vate our ath­letes? And phys­i­cal train­ing apart, what de­gree of men­tal prepa­ra­tion did we em­ploy?

We cer­tain­ly do not have the an­swers to all these ques­tions and it’s for that ex­act rea­son we call for a prop­er post-mortem, the find­ings of which must be made pub­lic.

Let it be done in an at­mos­phere of com­plete open­ness and hon­esty with­out fear of vic­tim­i­sa­tion.

Short of that, we can go to France in 2024 on­ly to find that at those Olympic Games, we nev­er took the time to en­sure we put our best feet for­ward.