Ac­cord­ing to the dic­tio­nary, an ide­al­ist is some­one who en­vi­sions an ide­al world rather than the re­al one. Some peo­ple con­sid­er ide­al­ists to be naive, im­prac­ti­cal and out of touch with re­al­i­ty. Ide­al­ists think that striv­ing for per­fec­tion makes the world a bet­ter place.

As prepa­ra­tion is well un­der­way for the 2025 Freeport to Port-of-Spain Walk which is sched­uled for Jan­u­ary 19. I found my­self read­ing the Jan­u­ary 20, 2015 “Things That Mat­ter” col­umn head­lined “Fix things for the ath­letes”. I not­ed not much had changed. As such, I told my­self maybe I should just reprint that Jan­u­ary 20, 2015 col­umn. But giv­en space con­straints, I will use ex­cerpts.

Back then (Jan­u­ary 20, 2015), I stat­ed: “I have one mis­sion which is to im­prove con­di­tions for ath­letes, sports­men and women in T&T and to do so with in­tegri­ty and eth­i­cal­ly. I am clear in my mind that by fo­cus­ing on our ath­letes, sports­men and women, sport will make sig­nif­i­cant and sus­tain­able progress. But in do­ing so and in striv­ing to achieve that mis­sion, there are crit­i­cal suc­cess fac­tors. Not every­one will agree with me and not every­one will see things the way I see them and that’s just fine as I re­spect every­one’s right to their opin­ion and views and to dis­agree with me but hav­ing ex­pe­ri­enced first-hand and in­ti­mate­ly the highs and lows of sport­ing life in T&T, I feel con­fi­dent that serv­ing our ath­letes, sports­men and women and striv­ing to cre­ate the en­abling en­vi­ron­ment that will al­low them to ex­e­cute on their crit­i­cal suc­cess fac­tors is the right thing to do.”

I fur­ther stat­ed that: “T&T has ben­e­fit­ed in more ways than one from the suc­cess of our ded­i­cat­ed sports­men and women. Those who choose to ig­nore the re­al­i­ty on the ground can feel free to do so. I have no in­ten­tion of turn­ing away from what I know from first-hand ex­pe­ri­ence to be the re­al sto­ry. In an ef­fort to raise pub­lic aware­ness and kick start fund rais­ing, I am par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Trinidad In­ter­na­tion­al Marathon.”

I bold­ly de­clared that: “I was de­ter­mined to fin­ish the 26-mile jour­ney as I am con­fi­dent that the ob­jec­tive of es­tab­lish­ing a ded­i­cat­ed T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) Ath­lete Wel­fare and Prepa­ra­tion Fund that is in­de­pen­dent and non-gov­ern­men­tal is im­por­tant and right.

To­day (De­cem­ber 3), it is con­firmed the 2025 “Go­ing4 Gold Walk” is on. Pre­vi­ous­ly known as the “#10 GOLDS24” Ath­lete Wel­fare and Prepa­ra­tion Fund walk, now legal­ly the TTOC Gold Foun­da­tion.

I was asked re­cent­ly, some­what cyn­i­cal­ly, “Boy you and your friends still walk­ing for Olympic gold when we haven’t won an Olympic gold in two Olympics? What sense that mak­ing? You are an ide­al­ist.”

At the time I did not re­ply. I just smiled.

Life is full of set­backs and the forces of dis­cour­age­ment ex­pend a lot of en­er­gy to get us to lose hope. I thought about the ques­tions and com­ments and de­cid­ed I will put pen to pa­per in to­day’s “Things That Mat­ter” col­umn.

We con­tin­ue to walk be­cause there is still much lip ser­vice. Like much else in this coun­try, much more is said than done as lead­ers play smart with fool­ish­ness.

I am nei­ther an ide­al­ist, naive or im­prac­ti­cal. What I am is prac­ti­cal and prag­mat­ic. I choose to deal with ob­sta­cles, fail­ure, mis­takes, hypocrisy and neg­a­tiv­i­ty dif­fer­ent­ly. And so we walk!

I am hap­py to be crit­i­cised for do­ing and mak­ing an ef­fort to change things rather than to be laud­ed for play­ing it safe.

Fix­ing things for ath­letes who as­pire to win Olympic gold is still un­fin­ished busi­ness. Los­ing the bat­tle isn’t los­ing the war.