Help­ing Olympians build bet­ter fi­nan­cial fu­tures is para­mount to me, and do­ing it with vi­sion and pur­pose. It is the en­gine dri­ving my ap­proach to Olympic move­ment lead­er­ship. 

It’s the mod­ern re­al­i­ty of Olymp­ism. 

Find­ing the bal­ance be­tween the tra­di­tion­al Olympic spir­it, ideals, val­ues, and ethos and suc­cess in elite, high-per­for­mance, and thus Olympic-lev­el sport. 

How­ev­er, suc­cess re­quires not just a bal­ance but sin­gu­lar fo­cus. Why? Be­cause of­ten­times in striv­ing for bal­ance, medi­oc­rity pre­vails. It’s just the way it is. 

Some­thing has to give be­cause you can­not be fish and fowl at the same time.

To­day, Old Year’s Day, we pre­pare to wel­come the New Year. A re­view of 2024 will re­veal more downs than ups as sport in Trinidad and To­ba­go will head in­to 2025 fac­ing make-or-break de­ci­sions. Things can—some may say—get worse be­fore they get bet­ter. 

To change course, dras­tic de­ci­sions are re­quired be­cause the fu­ture is now. If change and rad­i­cal de­ci­sions aren’t made, the con­se­quences will be neg­a­tive for the next decade plus. 

In 2025 we have to stop putting plas­ters on sores and seek out last­ing so­lu­tions.

Prob­lems and is­sues can­not be swept un­der the car­pet or the can kicked down the road. We have to start do­ing the things we fear. We have to iden­ti­fy the things that are hold­ing us back. Take an in­ven­to­ry of our weak­ness­es. Hav­ing iden­ti­fied what the weak­ness­es are, face them and take the nec­es­sary ac­tion or ac­tions.

There were a num­ber of top­ics I thought about for this week. What I will call “run of the mill” stuff, which is the usu­al nicey-nicey old-in­to-new-year cliché-filled sen­ti­ments.

Death stalks the land, and sport is not im­mune to the scourge.

But Sun­day night I was shocked to learn of the death of a young man, Kam­bon Omowale, a mem­ber of the Har­vard Club rug­by sec­tion, fol­low­ing a shoot­ing in Priz­gar Land, Laven­tille. Kam­bon and oth­ers cred­i­ble re­ports in­di­cate they were chill­ing by the neigh­bour­hood par­lour.

Kam­bon at­tend­ed Bel­mont Sec­ondary, known at a time as “In­ter­me­di­ate.” He played rug­by for his school and the Har­vard Club rug­by sec­tion. 

From all in­di­ca­tions, a de­cent young man who car­ried him­self with dig­ni­ty and class. He played with de­ter­mi­na­tion and courage, a team play­er. A gen­uine­ly “good one.”. Now dead. An­oth­er vic­tim of the epi­dem­ic of sense­less gun vi­o­lence. 

For the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, he is just an­oth­er num­ber among the 600-plus mur­ders for 2024. For those who knew Kam­bon. His un­time­ly death is dis­tress­ing. 

Sport is im­pact­ed by the wan­ton gun vi­o­lence that is a dark and gloomy cloud over the twin is­land re­pub­lic.

How many more must die? 

Yes! It’s painful. But we can­not lose hope or give up. We must re­main re­silient and fight back.

But it will re­quire a new mind­set and hon­est con­ver­sa­tions. It’s a na­tion­al cri­sis. It’s war. An equalis­er is need­ed. From the per­spec­tive of “all hands on deck.” I be­lieve sport lead­ers must change their mind­set. While sport isn’t the panacea. It’s an im­por­tant tool that has to be de­ployed in a spe­cif­ic but in­no­v­a­tive way. I use in­no­v­a­tive here to mean dif­fer­ent­ly. Some sports will be more ef­fec­tive than oth­ers. 

If I could cir­cle back to the be­gin­ning of to­day’s col­umn. Help­ing Olympians build bet­ter fi­nan­cial fu­tures. Is im­por­tant in the con­text of pro­vid­ing sport as a vi­able ca­reer op­tion. As an al­ter­na­tive. Sport can make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence. Let’s go in­to 2025 with a pos­i­tive mind­set.

It seems a bit odd to say Hap­py New Year. Let’s say we have a pur­pose­ful New Year.