With the world fac­ing the night­mare of Covid-19 (coro­n­avirus), two of T&T’s top sport­ing per­son­al­i­ties ply­ing their re­spec­tive trades pro­fes­sion­al­ly abroad, Olympic-bound Te­niel Camp­bell and foot­baller Levi Gar­cia, shared on Sat­ur­day how the pan­dem­ic have af­fect­ed dur­ing an on Is­ports on i95.5fm with host An­dre Er­rol Bap­tiste.

Twen­ty-three-year-old Camp­bell is in Italy, which has record­ed the most deaths (over 5,000) thus far, rid­ing pro­fes­sion­al­ly with UCI Women’s Con­ti­nen­tal Team Val­car-Trav­el & Ser­vice while Gar­cia, 22, is in Is­rael play­ing with Beitar Jerusalem.

“For the mo­ment, I am fine,” said Camp­bell calm­ly. “Things are con­tin­u­ing to change on a dai­ly week­ly ba­sis, thus find­ing struc­tured times are a bit dif­fi­cult. Lim­it­ing my time on so­cial me­dia is still a pri­or­i­ty, as see­ing too many sto­ries on the coro­n­avirus is not so good for my men­tal health so this has been help­ing me to cope with the cir­cum­stances at hand, how­ev­er, I am still aware of every­thing that is go­ing on to an ex­tent.”

She is adapt­ing as best as can be in a coun­try where as of Sat­ur­day, the death-toll had spiked to 4,825.

“So far, so good but it is a con­stant chal­lenge. Races are con­tin­u­ing to be can­celled thus un­cer­tain­ty con­tin­ues to rise, with re­spect to when we will be al­lowed to race. Apart from that now, there is start­ing to be a de­bate as to whether or not the play­ing field will be fair as in some coun­tries cy­clists are al­lowed to go out­side and train and in some oth­ers it is pro­hib­it­ed re­gard­less of your ath­let­ic sta­tus,” said Camp­bell.

“But as I said be­fore, the less I see is bet­ter for my brain, for the mo­ment. I am try­ing to pro­tect my men­tal health, as well as try­ing to stay as healthy as I can be while do­ing my best to main­tain fit­ness and act­ing ac­cord­ing­ly to the rule.”

Last year, Camp­bell copped sil­ver medals in both the Road Race and Time Tri­al at the Pan Amer­i­can Games held in Li­ma, Pe­ru. She re­mains fo­cused and con­tin­ues her re­lent­less dri­ve to keep im­prov­ing.

“A cou­ple days ago, I was prac­tic­ing a sched­ule but then, I just de­cid­ed to stop. In­stead I chose to al­low my body to wake up on its own, es­pe­cial­ly when I do not have train­ing out­doors, time tends to go by quick­ly this way,” said Camp­bell, who finds en­ter­tain­ing ways to pass time dai­ly.

“I start my day with break­fast, train­ing on the er­go, then there is gym de­pend­ing on the day. If I am not train­ing in­side and train­ing out­doors, I have more time, so I try to make new dish­es,” she said laugh­ing­ly. “Im­prove my Ital­ian, watch a lit­tle doc­u­men­tary, read a lit­tle book or so­cialise with my fam­i­ly.”

“Tri­ni” food love, is on the mind of young Camp­bell who added: “I could hon­est­ly do with a good home­made roti, pholourie, bar­beque, pelau, some of my un­cle Frank fish broth. I am hav­ing a lot of ‘Tri­ni’ with­draw­al when it comes to food, home-cook food es­pe­cial­ly.”

Camp­bell is the first T&T cy­clist to ever qual­i­fy for the Olympic Games but she is cau­tious look­ing ahead to Tokyo 2020.

“I pre­fer not to com­ment on the Olympics, this is for sev­er­al rea­sons. I have al­ready qual­i­fied a spot for T&T but there are still ath­letes in some sport­ing dis­ci­plines who have not, due to their Olympic qual­i­fiers be­ing post­poned, re­gard­less of the de­ci­sion of the Games not be­ing can­celled or if it so hap­pened to be can­celled, it will have an ef­fect on all,” de­clared Camp­bell.

With Italy un­der so much pres­sure with the virus Camp­bell sees the sit­u­a­tion as fright­en­ing.

“See­ing every­one with their masks and gloves, al­so the pub­lic be­hav­iour, when they see us rid­ing on the roads, some­times it can be very scary and a bit nerve rack­ing. Re­cent­ly I al­so start­ed see­ing some hears­es from time-to-time, when I go out­side to train, then there is al­so an am­bu­lance which I con­stant­ly hear when I am in my room.

“Apart from that, eat­ing too much on slow days, es­pe­cial­ly when I’m bored and my mind be­comes over­whelmed, I tend to munch a lot more than usu­al in these times. How­ev­er, de­spite all of this, go­ing on around me and in these un­for­tu­nate cir­cum­stances, I do have a psy­chol­o­gist on stand­by to guide me in find­ing the best so­lu­tions with any prob­lem, I may have,” said Camp­bell, thank­ing every­one for their sup­port and ad­vised them to be safe.

Lead­ing T&T foot­baller, Gar­cia was al­so fea­tured on the pro­gramme and he too ad­mits that his is do­ing well un­der the cir­cum­stance.

He said, “Every­thing set­tled, it is just that, with pre­cau­tions and every­thing they put the foot­ball on a pause for a while and every­one is just in­side, no more than five peo­ple to­geth­er. We have our sep­a­rate pro­grammes so we putting in the work so un­til every­thing clear up, every­one is in­side. I am in­side but every­thing is fine, fam­i­ly is good.”

Gar­cia, who is high­ly re­gard­ed as one of the faces of this coun­try’s fu­ture in foot­ball, miss­es fam­i­ly and his T&T meals but knows this is the sac­ri­fice as a pro­fes­sion­al.

“In an time like this, I miss the food, miss my fam­i­ly, every­one but you know, I am on a mis­sion so ba­si­cal­ly, it is a sac­ri­fice. For sure food is most im­por­tant thing at the mo­ment, be­ing just home most of the time and stay­ing fit, same ex­er­cis­es, a lot of core work, road runs at the mo­ment be­cause the fields are not re­al­ly clear at the mo­ment to train on; a lot of sprints more so,” said the 22-year-old, who wish­es every­one to be safe and se­cure in T&T.

“Keep pray­ing and do the cor­rect thing as re­quired.”