Sprint­er Kel­ly-Ann Bap­tiste re­mains pas­sion­ate about win­ning a medal for at the Olympic Games al­though it may like­ly be her fi­nal ap­pear­ance next year at the post­poned event in Tokyo, Japan. This was quite ob­vi­ous dur­ing an in­ter­view with An­dre Er­rol Bap­tiste on is­ports on i95.5fm on Sat­ur­day.

"The dream is still there," said the World Cham­pi­onship medal­list. "I've al­ways want­ed to get an Olympic medal in an in­di­vid­ual event and that still haven't evad­ed me, it's some­thing I still want to achieve.

"I'm go­ing to be 34 in Oc­to­ber. I don't see my­self go­ing past this next Olympics, this is my fifth Olympic Games and so I gen­uine­ly want to be there to help the team bring home its first Olympic medal."

Bap­tiste is based in Or­lan­do, Flori­da in the US and has been far­ing well dur­ing this pe­ri­od of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, await­ing its end to fig­ure out how to move for­ward.

"Things were a bit weird at first in terms of the lock­down and every­thing like that but now, they're open­ing up stores and things are get­ting back to nor­mal in some ways so ac­tu­al­ly not as bad in my area.

"We on­ly start­ed get­ting back on the track three weeks ago and for the rest of the sea­son for my­self, my team­mates and my coach, we're just kind of in the frame of mind of hav­ing fun. No one knows what is go­ing to hap­pen next year.

"We know that the Olympics is still hap­pen­ing but next year and then there is the World Cham­pi­onships in Ore­gon. I know the World gov­ern­ing ath­let­ics body put out a kind of like a resched­ule for the meets that sup­pose to start I think in Au­gust through Oc­to­ber but no one knows if that is go­ing to come off so for us it's just, stay­ing fit know­ing that there's still go­ing to be Olympics next year.

"So I'm just hav­ing fun, try­ing to move and not get my­self too out of shape," said Bap­tiste who trains with sev­er­al T&T ath­lete and in­ter­na­tion­al track stars un­der Lance Brau­man at Pure Ath­let­ics.

"Shau­nae Miller-Ui­bo, from the Ba­hamas, she is the 400 me­tres Olympic cham­pi­on, Noah Lyles, he is US 200m spe­cial­ist, Ke­ston (Bled­man) is here, Machel Ce­de­no is here, Khal­i­fa (St Fort) is here, and a cou­ple of oth­er peo­ple from Ja­maica.

"It's al­ways been so much fun to have just peo­ple from your coun­try here, makes it very sim­i­lar to just be­ing home and have an at­mos­phere like, just hav­ing peo­ple you can re­late with."

She has been re­lat­ing well to St Fort, who Bap­tiste shared is "set­tling in well".

"Khal­i­fa is some­body that I have ad­mired in terms of her work eth­ic, her ded­i­ca­tion to al­ways want to be well. In some ways, Khal­i­fa re­minds me of my­self and I just think that she, with the right en­vi­ron­ment and the right train­ing, she can be a world-beat­er. I'm ex­cit­ed for her and I'm look­ing to see what next year holds. She's been do­ing very well and you know it's a bunch of 'Tri­nis' here which just makes things eas­i­er for her.

And lucky for them Bled­man and Ce­de­no are as ex­cel­lent in the kitchen as they are on the track.

"Machel cooks the most," said Bap­tiste laugh­ing­ly, "Bled­man could cook. He can cook any­thing, Trinidad and Amer­i­ca food very good."

A thriv­ing en­vi­ron­ment for the young sprint­er which pleas­es the reign­ing Na­tion­al Am­a­teur Ath­let­ics As­so­ci­a­tion se­nior "Sports­woman of the Year", who added: "She has been lik­ing it and I've been lov­ing hav­ing her around and see­ing how she has pro­gressed and de­vel­oped over the past cou­ple of months. I'm tru­ly re­al­ly ex­cit­ed for her."

Bap­tise al­so spoke high­ly of her re­lay team­mate na­tion­al sprint cham­pi­on Ahye, who is cur­rent­ly on a two-year ban. She reached out to her and en­cour­aged her to keep "her head up" and if she needs any­thing, Ahye could reach out to her.

"Michelle is a very strong per­son men­tal­ly, I think this would make her stronger. This coro­n­avirus could be a bless­ing in dis­guise, I wish her all the best," said Bap­tiste who she be­lieves is an im­por­tant com­po­nent need­ed for T&T to reach the podi­um in the sprint re­lay.

"For us to win an Olympic medal in the re­lay we need to have our four best who­ev­er it may be. We need our best to stand a chance and Michelle is one of our best. It's a great thing that Khal­i­fa is here, I'm here, Se­moy (Hack­ett) is here, Michelle is close by (Mauri­cia) Pri­eto is in Al­aba­ma and some younger ones are com­ing up.

"So I think our prospects look well, I just think it's about plan­ning. The plan­ning that goes in­to cre­at­ing an Olympic medal, it just needs to be there and I just feel like, we have got­ten away with just hav­ing four fast peo­ple and that's not go­ing to cut it any more," said Bap­tiste, who is cur­rent­ly re­ly­ing on her spon­sors to sur­vive dur­ing this pan­dem­ic.

"Well you will have to hope that your shoe com­pa­ny holds the faith be­cause most peo­ple would have a con­tract and with no meets, in your con­tract there is a stip­u­la­tion that if you com­pete then you get x-amount of mon­ey and so you just hope that con­sid­er­ing every­thing that is go­ing on that your shoe com­pa­ny holds good faith and that they still care and for the peo­ple who don't have a con­tract, you would hope that your maybe coun­try or your gov­ern­ment steps in to as­sist you be­cause with­out meets you can't make mon­ey and if you don't have a shoe con­tract which a lot of peo­ple don't then you're just one your own and you have to fend for your­self and so it's things like fed­er­a­tions or even the pri­vate sec­tor that can come in and peo­ple have dif­fer­ent spon­sor­ships they may have and you re­ly on those things to kind of help you dur­ing this time. But I think a lot of peo­ple are still wait­ing on sup­port.

A fa­mil­iar sit­u­a­tion as with fund­ing for elite ath­letes which due to a bad ex­pe­ri­ence Bap­tiste has opt­ed to go it on her own.

"If you have a clear pic­ture of what some­one is do­ing in terms of per­for­mance that's al­ready laid out like why make it hard­er for them so for me and my ca­reer I just felt like it was al­ways a has­sle, or just made hard to ac­cess fund­ing and so I de­cid­ed that I would fend for my­self and I don't have any an­i­mos­i­ty to­wards the fed­er­a­tion or gov­ern­ment where that is con­cerned," rea­soned Bap­tiste, who was pre­vi­ous­ly coached by Ato Boldon.

She gushed over the four-time Olympic medal­lists, who she be­lieves has a lot to of­fer as a coach to T&T.

"I re­spect his en­er­gy, his ex­pe­ri­ence is huge. He is an Olympic medal­list sev­er­al times, he's an es­tab­lished track and field ath­lete for the coun­try. He has been there to the Games, he knows what it is like" said Bap­tiste. "The val­ue he could bring to the team would be tremen­dous."

Al­though her ca­reer seems to be win­ning down, Bap­tiste still has the op­ti­mism of reach­ing the podi­um on the Olympic stage and still has a vivid im­age of when she was in Athens she saw Veron­i­ca Camp­bell-Brown win­ning the 200m gold medal and step­ping on the podi­um she had tears in her eyes and that and it res­onat­ed with her.at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

"I'm at the stage that I prob­a­bly don't have the child-like pas­sion about track and field but for me, it's more about the mis­sion to in­spire peo­ple. I want to an ex­am­ple of what's pos­si­ble to the peo­ple that come be­hind me.

"I think that is what dri­ves me every day to get up and go to train­ing and leave my heart on the track and just be an ex­am­ple of what's pos­si­ble and if that amounts to an Olympic medal that's great and if not, I just hope along the way through­out my ca­reer, I would have in­spired some­body to dream big!"