Dear Ed­i­tor

Our fail­ure in Rio 2016 did not teach us the lessons to im­prove holis­ti­cal­ly our Olympic strat­e­gy and phi­los­o­phy there­fore, Tokyo 2020 proved even more dis­as­trous. Guide­lines pro­vid­ed for im­prove­ment sug­gest­ed in a let­ter to the ed­i­tor in Au­gust 2016 were ig­nored. Us­ing a sim­i­lar Rio 2016 out­dat­ed ap­proach of man­age­ment, or­ga­ni­za­tion and train­ing to pro­vide mo­ti­va­tion and con­fi­dence in Tokyo 2020 pro­duced ab­solute­ly no re­sults.

A re­minder of the high­lights in Rio was that Ker­shon Wal­cott brought home the on­ly medal (bronze) and gym­nas­tics end­ed up in court. Sure­ly, the agony of de­feat must in­spire us to cre­ate a new vi­sion. This may re­quire us to re­lin­quish much of our cur­rent un­fruit­ful ath­let­ic prac­tices. The in­tent of these sug­ges­tions is not to in­crim­i­nate any­one but rather to as­sist every­one in­ter­est­ed in our sport­ing suc­cess to gal­va­nize fresh mod­ern ideas.

The sum­ma­ry of guide­lines from the let­ter “Boy Scouts in the Olympics” in 2016 in­sist­ed that:

No one should be go­ing to the Olympic Games for the ex­pe­ri­ence. Oth­er games that can pro­vide ex­pe­ri­ence are the Na­tion­al Cham­pi­onships; Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean Games; the Com­mon­wealth Games; the Pan Am Games and even the World Cham­pi­onships. The Olympics is a fi­nal des­ti­na­tion. It is about win­ning medals; ex­pe­ri­ence is a by-prod­uct of that ac­com­plish­ment.

T&T's best should be those ath­letes who with­in the 12 months lead­ing up to the Olympics have a world top ten rank­ings. Par­tic­i­pat­ing in the last Olympics should not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly qual­i­fy any ath­lete for the next Olympics.

The sec­ond guide­line should al­so be used to mon­i­tor those ath­letes who go globe-trot­ting out­side the “Olympic sea­son” dom­i­nat­ing meets with roller-coast­er per­for­mances in the ab­sence of the top guns. When the bells toll the top ten guide­lines ap­ply.

Peo­ple with dual cit­i­zen­ship should not be al­lowed to “bump” lo­cals off the team if their coun­try of choice re­ject­ed them. (Gym­nas­tics?)

The con­di­tions above will elim­i­nate per­sons who on­ly want to chalk up at­ten­dances at the Olympics but have nei­ther an in­ter­est in com­pet­ing nor the qual­i­fy­ing stan­dard as medal prospects.

To avoid the em­bar­rass­ing de­mo­tion from gold to dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion “drug cheats” should not be even al­lowed on our Olympic team, pe­ri­od.

The views ex­pressed in this com­mu­ni­ca­tion are the voic­es of lo­cal sports en­thu­si­asts, zeal­ous be­liev­ers in our ath­letes' abil­i­ties to per­form at their top-lev­el and my for­eign-based broth­er, all Tri­nis to the bone.

Our Na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee must rec­og­nize that they need help to for­mu­late the right recipe to make our ath­letes medal-pro­duc­tive. If the Com­mit­tee re­fus­es to ac­knowl­edge its own in­ef­fi­cien­cy, this will not be help­ful to our ded­i­cat­ed boys and girls and the re­sults may be cat­a­stroph­ic. Al­so, we must not pro­cras­ti­nate in re­form­ing our best prac­tices that have failed or take of­fence to con­struc­tive crit­i­cism, less we find that time has run out in re­al­iz­ing our dream for 2024.

The Old Mod­el where our lead­ers in sports pon­tif­i­cat­ed what should be done has out­lived its use­ful­ness. The flaws of that sys­tem are

1. Send­ing our top ath­letes abroad to train speaks for lack of be­lief in our­selves to de­sign pro­grams to train lo­cal ath­letes on home soil and take them to the pin­na­cle.

2. We thought it re­lieved us of the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of de­vel­op­ing our ath­letes and tak­ing the easy way out but still tak­ing the cred­it for good per­for­mance.

3. Our ath­letes trained un­der less than one hun­dred per cent at­ten­tion and did not re­ceive full val­ue for the mon­ey spent.

4.. Our ath­letes were nev­er giv­en the se­crets of the “ath­letes of the round ta­ble” and there­fore, were des­tined to play sec­ond fid­dle to their US train­ing part­ners.

Would you train the neigh­bour's child to do bet­ter than your own in school?

T&T must put heart and soul; fi­nance, ef­fort and com­mit­ment and walk the talk to reach star­dom in the Olympics.

A Phi­los­o­phy. There is no bet­ter way to fu­el the thrust than with phi­los­o­phy. As a na­tion to­tal in­volve­ment is need­ed for the high­est achieve­ment and the bar must be raised in suc­ces­sion plan­ning. The ad­min­is­tra­tion must pledge full sup­port for com­peti­tors as­pir­ing to the top. For the ath­lete: if you have to com­pete like a pro you must live like a pro.

The Olympic Com­mit­tee. Tak­ing the bull by the horn to start the process a high pro­file com­mit­tee must be formed with the fol­low­ing pro­fes­sion­als:

1. Coach­es of the var­i­ous sports

2. Strength and Con­di­tion­ing Train­ers

3. Di­eti­cians

4. Phys­i­cal Ther­a­pists

5. Med­ical Doc­tors

6. Sports Psy­chol­o­gists

7. Mo­ti­va­tion­al Speak­ers

8. Cur­rent and Past Ath­letes to rep­re­sent the ath­letes.

9. Co­or­di­na­tors/Man­agers

An Olympic Vil­lage. The venue where all prepa­ra­tion and train­ing will take place. A sports School has long been on the back burn­er. Let's take a leap of faith and have the equip­ment, per­son­nel, train­ing and the ath­lete in the same lo­ca­tion.

Set­ting Stan­dards. This is the role of the Olympic Com­mit­tee to set the stan­dard at the in­tro­duc­to­ry, in­ter­me­di­ate and na­tion­al lev­els. Stan­dards are to be built where there is none, cre­at­ing ap­pli­ca­tions if nec­es­sary and em­ploy­ing ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence. The Olympic Stan­dard be­comes ap­plic­a­ble when the prospects have cir­cum­vent­ed the oth­er lev­els.

The Nurs­ery. Olympic cham­pi­ons are born out of nurs­eries where the in­put is def­i­nite and the out­put pre­dictable. In the ab­sence of nurs­eries in­ter­est­ed and po­ten­tial ath­letes should be able to vol­un­teer in­to a na­tion­al train­ing pro­gram for three years lead­ing up to the Olympics. The in­volve­ment will rep­re­sent a con­cen­trat­ed ef­fort un­der the na­tion­al flag with the par­tic­i­pants hav­ing one pur­pose and one goal, the Olympics. Oth­er coun­tries like Chi­na and Rus­sia do this and they have been suc­cess­ful. Even the Ja­maican ex­pe­ri­ence seems to be bear­ing fruit.

*The Role of Gov­ern­ment and the Busi­ness Com­mu­ni­ty:

*To spon­sor the train­ing bill for the next three to four years.

*To pro­vide train­ing equip­ment and videos of how to train

*To pro­vide ev­i­dence of suc­cess­ful ath­letes and how they achieved their goals

*To pro­vide equip­ment to mea­sure per­for­mance and ef­fi­cien­cy

*Build an ath­let­ic met­ric data­base to track ath­letes' per­for­mance and to make a rec­om­men­da­tion for im­prove­ment.

*To fi­nance par­tic­i­pa­tion in re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al games.

Let us work to­geth­er, hard and har­mo­nious­ly to cre­ate a 20/20 sports vi­sion for our promis­ing ath­letes who de­serve much more than they have been re­ceiv­ing from us.

A sys­tem that is re­sult-ori­ent­ed will give every stake­hold­er a niche to make a con­tri­bu­tion and a rea­son to cel­e­brate when the goal is reached.

For­mer na­tion­al Ten­nis cham­pi­on

Lennox Fran­cis

fran­cis.lennox10@gmail.com