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Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Global sport must reinvent, become diverse

by

Brian Lewis
658 days ago
20230502
Brian Lewis Things That Matter Logo NEW

Brian Lewis Things That Matter Logo NEW

Glob­al sport or­gan­i­sa­tions are bar­ri­ers to change.

The In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee (IOC), the Com­mon­wealth Games Fed­er­a­tion (CGF), FI­FA and oth­er Eu­ro­pean-dom­i­nat­ed or­gan­i­sa­tions love to claim that the speci­fici­ty of sport is le­git­i­mate grounds to af­firm au­ton­o­my and self-reg­u­la­tion while de­pen­dent on the pub­lic purse to fund their events.

In the face of com­pelling ev­i­dence of chron­ic and acute sys­tem, process break­downs, and a deep and en­dur­ing racist, elit­ist and dis­crim­i­na­to­ry cul­ture, glob­al sport has lost the right to the sta­tus of spe­cial gov­er­nance case. Au­ton­o­my is no longer ab­solute. Au­ton­o­my has to be earned.

T&T and Caribbean so­ci­eties are non­cha­lant about racism, clas­sism and elit­ism. To pro­tect your­self from the neg­a­tive psy­cho­log­i­cal and emo­tion­al im­pact you can ei­ther go in­to fight or flight mode. Let me share a per­son­al ex­am­ple of a fight to stay in the game—To be bet­ter, not bit­ter; to go high when oth­ers go low; to rise and not fall.

A new vi­sion and ideas pro­posed dur­ing my time as T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC), T&T Com­mon­wealth Games (TTC­GA) and T&T Sand and Beach Games As­so­ci­a­tion (TTS­B­GA) pres­i­dents were well re­ceived: bid to host the Com­mon­wealth Youth Games 2021, Pan on de Podi­um, Fu­ture is Fe­male, Re­place Guns With Medals, Medal bonus­es, 10 Golds24, TTOC mar­ket de­part­ment, propos­ing a pub­lic hous­ing pol­i­cy for TEAM TTO ath­letes, the TTOC Gold Foun­da­tion, three non-prof­it TeamT­TO com­pa­nies, a TTS­B­GA, TTOC Gov­er­nance Com­mis­sion, TTOC Youth Com­mis­sion, TTOC ath­lete wel­fare and pro­grammes de­part­ment and Sport In­dus­try TT.

How­ev­er, in 2013, I ran for the TTOC pres­i­den­cy and was made to feel in­fe­ri­or, in­com­pe­tent, in­ca­pable and un­sup­port­ed. I was told I wasn’t at the lev­el to head an in­sti­tu­tion such as the TTOC. It re­quired a high­er cal­i­bre of in­di­vid­ual with ac­cess and a net­work that was be­yond my reach and in­flu­ence. I was urged to stay as sec­re­tary gen­er­al.

In 2014, I was con­sid­ered for the pres­i­den­cy of the Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion of Na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tees (CANOC). In­flu­en­tial Trin­bag­on­ian col­leagues cam­paigned and lob­bied against my can­di­da­cy.

In re­cent years, I have been told to cut my afro, take out my braids, called a “saga boy” be­cause of my sar­to­r­i­al pro­cliv­i­ty and hung out to dry in the court of pub­lic and me­dia opin­ion. I am un­apolo­getic and un­afraid of “or else.”

In 2016, in­ter­nal de­ci­sions were made with­in TTOC, as the leader at the time, I stood in the gap notwith­stand­ing my views and vote.

The right thing to do was re­spect democ­ra­cy. Oth­ers are not held to the same stan­dard of ac­count­abil­i­ty and car­ry no detri­men­tal long-term con­se­quences. They con­tin­ue to be held out as paragons of virtue and role mod­els who rep­re­sent the best of T&T. That’s life in the ‘House built by Colo­nial­ism, slav­ery and the Transat­lantic Slave Trade’.

De­pend­ing on who—those ad­vo­cat­ing for equal­i­ty and so­cial jus­tice are brand­ed con­fronta­tion­al, abra­sive, con­tentious and an­gry while oth­ers are called com­mit­ted, ded­i­cat­ed, pas­sion­ate and self­less.

Glob­al sport or­gan­i­sa­tions can­not re­tain their au­ton­o­my and self-reg­u­lat­ed sta­tus if they don’t em­brace the re­shaped fu­ture.

A broad­er view and role of sport and the use of his­to­ry to change the fu­ture, is up­on us. The bi­na­ry hege­mo­ny of glob­al sport must rein­vent and be­come di­verse for the mind­set and at­ti­tude to change.

Earned au­ton­o­my and good gov­er­nance aren’t pos­si­ble where anachro­nis­tic at­ti­tudes and cul­tures that re­flect so­ci­etal prej­u­dices and as­sump­tions about who pos­sess­es the skills and qual­i­ties to run things con­tin­ue to os­tracise those who chal­lenge un­con­scious bias and prej­u­dices be­cause they look and act a cer­tain way.


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