Fi­nal­ly, Trinidad and To­ba­go has an­nounced it­self yet again to the world at the Bei­jing 2022 Win­ter games! The T&T bob­sleigh team has just fin­ished com­pet­ing by be­ing one of 30 teams in the two-man bob­sleigh event.

This is not the first time that T&T has sent a del­e­ga­tion to com­pete at the Win­ter Olympics. In 1994 in Lille­ham­mer, Nor­way, T&T made their de­but ap­pear­ance. The del­e­ga­tion at that time con­sist­ed of two bob­sled­ders - Gre­go­ry Sun and Cur­tis Har­ry in the two-man com­pe­ti­tion and they fin­ished 37th.

At the 1998 Win­ter Olympics in Nagano, Japan again the two-man team of bob­sled­ders Gre­go­ry Sun and Cur­tis Har­ry were the flag bear­ers, and this time, they fin­ished 32nd. In 2002, in Salt Lake City USA, there was a three-man del­e­ga­tion con­sist­ing of three bob­sled­ders - Gre­go­ry Sun, An­drew Mc­Neil­ly, and Er­rol Aguil­era. They com­pet­ed in the 2 man com­pe­ti­tion and a four-run event in which all three com­pet­ed and fin­ished in 37th place. There was no Cur­tis Har­ry then as he was re­placed by Mc­Neil­ly and Aguil­era.

It is now 20 years since the coun­try's last ap­pear­ance in Salt Lake City to be com­pet­ing at the Win­ter Olympics. The fi­nal team of Ax­el Brown and flag-bear­er An­dre Mar­cano, who was re­placed af­ter the first heat by Ska­keel John due to an in­jury, must have made coach Thomas Har­ris proud as they fin­ished 28th. There is no doubt that the in­spi­ra­tion of the T&T bob­sleigh team came cour­tesy of the Ja­maican bob­sleigh team of 1988 and the film 'Cool Run­nings'. For­eign­ers who may have nev­er heard of T&T must be look­ing up the map to see where the coun­try is lo­cat­ed.

Anec­do­tal­ly, a Cana­di­an friend called to ask how can Trinidad and To­ba­go pos­si­bly be com­pet­ing at the Win­ter Games. It mat­ters not that it has tak­en 20 long years to be com­pet­ing at these Win­ter Olympics, and it al­so mat­ters not how they fin­ish, but to com­pete and put T&T on the map is what can on­ly be seen as the re­al sus­tain­able ben­e­fit of par­tic­i­pa­tion. One would hope that this may very well in­spire younger gen­er­a­tions to com­pete at fu­ture Win­ter Olympics with the likes of the present coach Har­ris do­ing coach­ing du­ties ably as­sist­ed by An­dre Mar­cano.

But what about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of com­pet­ing at oth­er win­ter Olympic events?

There are a to­tal of 109 medal events across 15 sports. Is ice skat­ing far-fetched? I hon­est­ly do not have a clue about the lo­gis­tics of putting down an ice rink. Could the gov­ern­ment or some­one from the pri­vate sec­tor ex­am­ine the pos­si­bil­i­ty? I am cer­tain an ice rink will at­tract young­sters to skate and it may very well be able to sus­tain it­self. In our cli­mate, it may not stand a snow­ball in hell of a chance to be done but why can't the pos­si­bil­i­ties be ex­am­ined with tech­nol­o­gy as it is to­day who knows if it can or can't? Just a thought. Con­grats again to our bob­sleigh team. They have made the coun­try proud and let us hope it has in­spired some of our young­sters to take up the sport of bob­sled­ding.

With all that's go­ing on in the world of sport, spare a thought for our So­ca Princess­es who take to the field lat­er to­day in a cru­cial World Cup qual­i­fi­er against Nicaragua at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um. It must al­so be ex­treme­ly tough for coach Ken­wyne Jones who has had just four days to work with the en­tire squad ahead of the game. The life of a na­tion­al coach is dif­fi­cult as play­ers have club com­mit­ments and the clubs on­ly re­lease their play­ers a few days be­fore a na­tion­al game and to­geth­er with new play­ers com­ing in­to the squad, it is al­ways dif­fi­cult for the coach to im­ple­ment a pre­ferred sys­tem. This is es­pe­cial­ly true if he/she de­cides to use a new sys­tem as well as im­part­ing their pre­ferred style of play for the play­ers to be com­fort­able and per­form at op­ti­mum lev­el.

I re­al­ly ap­plaud the move of for­mer So­ca War­rior Car­los Ed­wards be­ing added to the coach­ing staff. Ob­vi­ous­ly, he has the same coach­ing style and phi­los­o­phy as Jones. Coach­es all over the world, even here in Trinidad & To­ba­go, work in tan­dem. They think like one and that is why a coach, even mov­ing from one club to an­oth­er, will bring his trust­ed lieu­tenant with him. We see it all the time with leagues all over the world that when a man­ag­er is ap­point­ed by a club, with­in a few days he ap­points his sec­ond in com­mand as he un­der­stands his phi­los­o­phy and what he wants to achieve with the team.

Both Jones and Ed­wards have played at the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el and at the pro­fes­sion­al lev­el with some of the most pop­u­lar leagues in Eu­rope so their ex­pe­ri­ence will help and guide the play­ers through some rough and dif­fi­cult times. Ul­ti­mate­ly, I have no doubt that this dy­nam­ic duo can do the job for the team.

The women will al­so know of their achieve­ments in the world of foot­ball and they will trust them and un­doubt­ed­ly give them 100% on the field. In Jones' short time as head coach, he has done well but the acid test comes now with the world cup qual­i­fiers. I am op­ti­mistic he and the team will come through with fly­ing colours.

With the gov­ern­ment's pol­i­cy of 50% ca­pac­i­ty for out­door events, I sin­cere­ly hope the foot­ball fans will jour­ney down to the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um to sup­port our Princess­es. They need the sup­port as they have a home ad­van­tage and the fans of T&T must make that count. Please let us go out and sup­port the team so the coun­try can have some­thing else to cel­e­brate.

Good luck, So­ca Princess­es. T&T is in your cor­ner!

Ed­i­tor's note:

The views ex­pressed in this col­umn are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion of which he is a stake­hold­er.