It was a bit­ter-sweet mo­ment on Tues­day evening as the De­on Lendore Foun­da­tion (DLF) was launched at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain.

Lendore, a for­mer 400-me­tre T&T World re­lay cham­pi­on, and a gen­uine world con­tender in the for­mat, died trag­i­cal­ly in a car ac­ci­dent in Texas, USA, in Jan­u­ary 2022 at the age of 29.

Fol­low­ing his death, Lendore's moth­er, Chrispina Ed­mund pushed for a non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion to be cre­at­ed in his mem­o­ry, with the in­ten­tion of help­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of T&T ath­letes in any way pos­si­ble.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia Ed­mund ex­pressed the chal­lenges she faced in or­der to reach this mo­ment, al­most two years af­ter his son's pass­ing.

"The Abi­lene In­ter­na­tion­al con­tact­ed me and asked if I will give them the ho­n­our to do this. There was a lot of ground­work to be done legal­ly but I gave my con­sent and here we are now," said a pleased Ed­mund.

De­spite be­ing un­der the weath­er, Min­is­ter of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Sham­fa Cud­joe-Lewis was in at­ten­dance and seemed elat­ed to speak about the im­por­tance of the ini­tia­tive.

"This foun­da­tion fo­cus­es on of­fer­ing sup­port to the young stu­dent-ath­letes, to those who are look­ing for op­por­tu­ni­ties in the US, to women and girls who we are hop­ing will re­main in the game and stop falling out when they get to pu­ber­ty or to a child-bear­ing age," said Cud­joe-Lewis.

The Sports Min­is­ter al­so fo­cused on the im­por­tance of de­vel­op­ing ath­letes from a very young age, in or­der to give T&T a chance of at­tain­ing more podi­um spots in fu­ture com­pe­ti­tions.

"It calls for us as a com­mu­ni­ty, as the sport­ing fra­ter­ni­ty, to reach back in­to Pri­ma­ry school or even ear­ly child­hood ed­u­ca­tion lev­el and make the in­vest­ment from there. An en­ti­ty like the De­on Lendore Foun­da­tion can go a long way in pro­vid­ing that sup­port," said the Min­is­ter.

Fol­low­ing in the ex­am­ple of club founder of the Abi­lene Wild­cats, Cliff Bertrand, Lendore was al­ways adamant in aid­ing and men­tor­ing younger ath­letes in every facet of their trade.

An ex­am­ple of this is for­mer World and Com­mon­wealth cham­pi­on Jereem 'The Dream' Richards, who ap­peared vir­tu­al­ly at the cer­e­mo­ny and was full of praise for the ef­forts his de­ceased friend put in­to him as a bud­ding ath­lete.

He said: "De­on Lendore is a once-in-a-life­time type of per­son and some­one who should nev­er be for­got­ten. Let the lega­cy of De­on Lendore live for­ev­er!"

The foun­da­tion is chaired by for­mer ath­let­ic coach Michael Hink­son, with for­mer ath­lete An­drew Bruce as vice-chair and an­oth­er for­mer ath­lete, Franklin Cum­ber­batch, in the role of the board's sec­re­tary. Cum­ber­batch has set a goal for the foun­da­tion to raise US$ 3 mil­lion by the end of 2026.

With T&T's ath­let­ics set-up cur­rent­ly falling short in terms of podi­um fin­ish­es and bud­ding prospects, this foun­da­tion can act as a regime to iden­ti­fy and pro­pel ath­letes from a very young age.

If young ath­letes are able to adopt the men­tal­i­ty car­ried by the late great De­on Lendore, T&T will be sure to see fu­ture suc­cess in the world of sports.

Al­so in at­ten­dance were May­or of Ari­ma, Al­der­man Bal­li­ram Ma­haraj, Coun­cil­lor for Cal­vary Ari­ma, Je­niece Scott and Sen­a­tor Lau­rel Leza­ma-Lee Sing.