Je­lani Beck­les

The T&T Gym­nas­tics Fed­er­a­tion (TTGF) yes­ter­day stuck to its de­ci­sion to re­move The­ma Williams from the Rio Test Event, ef­fec­tive­ly cur­tail­ing any chances she had of qual­i­fy­ing for the Olympic Games.

The TTGF with­drew Williams from the qual­i­fi­er on Sat­ur­day claim­ing a re­port from her US coach John Ged­dert sug­gest­ed that she was suf­fer­ing with a sore an­kle and was not per­form­ing at a high lev­el dur­ing one of her train­ing days.

In­stead Williams' al­ter­nate Marisa Dick was sched­uled to com­pete in the artis­tic gym­nas­tics event at 3.30 pm (T&T time) in an ef­fort to book a spot in the Games in Au­gust.

How­ev­er, Williams' coach lat­er claimed that the TTGF mis­un­der­stood him and the gym­nast was able to com­pete since she was cleared by a physi­cian.

Her moth­er, He­len Adams, and at­tor­ney Kei­th Scot­land ap­pealed, claim­ing the de­ci­sion to re­move her was ir­ra­tional, il­le­gal, null and void. They re­quest­ed a tele­con­fer­ence meet­ing at 10 am yes­ter­day to dis­cuss the is­sue.

Adams said yes­ter­day that the Fed­er­a­tion did not re­spond to the re­quest.

"The Fed­er­a­tion did not re­spond to the ap­peal. I am very hurt. How­ev­er, this has been the pat­tern from the be­gin­ning. This is not the first time some­thing like this has hap­pened. But God has his plan and I am wait­ing to see it un­fold."

Adams com­pared the Fed­er­a­tion's han­dling of the ap­peal to how swift­ly they dealt with the in­for­ma­tion that Williams was in­jured.

"Strange­ly enough, the Fed­er­a­tion was able to have an emer­gency meet­ing im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter Ged­dert sent a re­port con­cern­ing The­ma's progress. They have not re­spond­ed to us up to now, but they were able to meet swift­ly when John (Ged­dert) sent an email con­cern­ing The­ma."

This sit­u­a­tion has been brew­ing for the past six months af­ter Williams qual­i­fied for the Test event.

Williams, 20, qual­i­fied for the Olympic Test event af­ter plac­ing 59th over­all in the artis­tic women's in­di­vid­ual qual­i­fi­ca­tion at the World Gym­nas­tics Cham­pi­onships in Glas­gow, Scot­land, in Oc­to­ber 2015.

Dick al­so com­pet­ed at the World Cham­pi­onships, plac­ing 77th over­all. Williams should have been au­to­mat­i­cal­ly se­lect­ed by the TTGF to rep­re­sent this coun­try at the Test event. How­ev­er, the Fed­er­a­tion in­sist­ed that Williams and Dick had to com­pete in two more events be­fore one was cho­sen for the Test event.

Af­ter con­sul­ta­tion among mem­bers of the TTGF, Williams was cho­sen.

How­ev­er, in Feb­ru­ary se­mi-nude pho­tographs of Williams and Dick cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia which forced the TTGF to take the mat­ter to its Dis­ci­pli­nary Com­mit­tee. Williams re­ceived sup­port from nu­mer­ous lo­cal fans in­clud­ing her god­moth­er, co­me­di­an Nik­ki Cros­by who ini­ti­at­ed a cam­paign called "We Sup­port The­ma."

Cros­by, along with so­ca artiste Fay Ann Lyons-Al­varez, co­me­di­an Pene­lope Spencer, So­ca War­riors foot­baller Maylee At­tin-John­son and many oth­er women posed top­less with their hands cov­er­ing their chests, a sim­i­lar pic­ture to that of Williams.

Af­ter de­lib­er­a­tion the TTGF con­firmed Williams as T&T's rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the Rio Test event, be­fore the events of the last two days.