A spec­tac­u­lar Car­ni­val-themed open­ing cer­e­mo­ny on Fri­day (Au­gust 4) and Nikoli Black­man's swim­ming gold medal on Sun­day (Au­gust 7) pro­vid­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go with a much-need­ed in­jec­tion of great news with the Trin­ba­go2023 Com­mon­wealth Youth Games (CYG) cen­tre stage.

Sat­ur­day morn­ing, im­ages of the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny on the front and back pages of all three dai­ly news­pa­pers, her­ald­ed a pow­er­ful sto­ry of the pos­i­tive im­pact of the Valmi­ki Ma­haraj-di­rect­ed and pro­duced spec­ta­cle.

Com­mon­wealth's "eyes and ears" are on Trinidad and To­ba­go. Dur­ing a mul­ti­sport event, it's not easy meet­ing the height­ened ex­pec­ta­tion of in­ter­na­tion­al ath­letes and of­fi­cials no mat­ter what their age. Mis­takes, er­rors, and laps­es of judge­ment are un­der in­tense scruti­ny. The crit­i­cism is in­stan­ta­neous and se­vere. There is no hid­ing place for those who can't func­tion un­der mi­cro­scop­ic scruti­ny and im­mense pres­sure. Some laps­es can be tol­er­at­ed oth­ers will not be tol­er­at­ed. Lead­er­ship, char­ac­ter and rep­u­ta­tion will be test­ed. Rep­u­ta­tion and cred­i­bil­i­ty will ei­ther be en­hanced or dam­aged. On the neg­a­tive side, the dam­age can be ir­repara­ble as an op­por­tu­ni­ty lost can nev­er be re­gained.

There is no hid­ing place. No sym­pa­thy or em­pa­thy. Just get the job done - no ex­cuse. That's the re­al­i­ty of the nter­na­tion­al mul­ti­sport en­vi­ron­ment. If you have nev­er done it be­fore and you aren't teach­able, the Dun­ning-Kruger ef­fect is high and will cre­ate prob­lems that can­not be quick­ly or eas­i­ly solved.

What are the first two stages of Dun­ning- Kruger? The first stage in sim­ple lan­guage is when you don't know, that you don't know and the sec­ond is when you know you don't know.

Dun­ning-Kruger is alive and kick­ing. We all can suf­fer from it at any point in time. To mit­i­gate against it, one must be able and will­ing to chal­lenge your own as­sump­tions and not over­es­ti­mate your com­pe­tence while at the same time dis­re­gard­ing or di­min­ish­ing those who are com­pe­tent. Fail­ures dur­ing a mul­ti­sport event, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing an event such as a Com­mon­wealth Youth Games, cre­ate a neg­a­tive ex­pe­ri­ence for, in par­tic­u­lar, youth with far-reach­ing long-term im­pact.

Lead­er­ship mat­ters. An im­por­tant and crit­i­cal suc­cess fac­tor in an in­ter­na­tion­al sport event is the vol­un­teers. The vol­un­teers are the un­sung he­roes. If you want to learn the truth, the whole truth and noth­ing but the truth, speak to the vol­un­teers. They are the ones who will ei­ther make or break - in this case the Trin­ba­go2023 Com­mon­wealth Youth Games.

With three days to go be­fore the clos­ing cer­e­mo­ny this Fri­day (Au­gust 11) meet­ing the de­liv­ery ex­pec­ta­tions of every­one in­clud­ing the Com­mon­wealth Games Fed­er­a­tion (CGF) and cor­po­rate part­ners is in the hands of the Dou­glas Ca­ma­cho-led lo­cal or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee (the LOC). Mis­takes, fail­ures and er­rors made can't be erased but what peo­ple - at the least want to know is they are lis­tened to, heard and cor­rec­tions will be made. The ath­letes de­serve the best ver­sion of what Trin­ba­go2023 has to of­fer. Mit­i­gat­ing the Dun­ning- Kruger ef­fect is a crit­i­cal suc­cess fac­tor.

On an ex­treme­ly sad note, while pen­ning to­day's col­umn, I re­ceived an ear­ly morn­ing What­sapp call that one of my very good friends Kelvin Gue­vara Jnr had just un­ex­pect­ed­ly died. Kelvin is a for­mer na­tion­al rug­by play­er. He and I played for Fal­cons, GF and Har­vard Club Rug­by teams. Our friend­ship is a long-stand­ing broth­er­hood. A reg­u­lar read­er of the "Things That Mat­ter" col­umn. I al­ways looked for­ward to Kelvin's views and com­ments. His un­wa­ver­ing words of en­cour­age­ment and sup­port. My sin­cer­est con­do­lences to his fam­i­ly and many friends. RIP Kelvin.