"Every­thing you can imag­ine is re­al"- Pablo Pi­cas­so

It's ear­ly days in an­oth­er new year. Thought­ful in­tro­spec­tion craft­ed deep and pro­found changes for a bet­ter ver­sion of hu­man­i­ty, a bet­ter so­ci­ety, com­mu­ni­ty and coun­try. But, alas it quick­ly dis­si­pates in­to cru­el re­al­i­ties. Trig­ger fin­ger gun­men run­ning wild. Shots 'bussing' with mur­der­ous in­tent.

In­side the first week - sev­en days in­to 2024- Trinidad and To­ba­go has racked up 13 mur­ders. Armed men with high-pow­ered ri­fles emp­ty their clips on in­tend­ed tar­gets who in the fi­nal sec­onds of life have no place to run.

New Year’s hopes dashed. It's not on­ly on the crime front. In­side the first week, the sto­ry emerged that the two main track and field venues as of De­cem­ber 31, 2023, have been de­cer­ti­fied by World Ath­let­ics with the con­se­quences that go with such de­cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

In an Olympic year, track and field, the sport dis­ci­pline that has won for T&T 15 out of 19 Olympic medals and all three of the twin-is­land Re­pub­lic's gold medals have found it­self in such a sit­u­a­tion. It's an in­dict­ment on the bu­reau­crat­ic process and sys­tem. It's of­ten, not for want of well-mean­ing in­ten­tion but im­ple­men­ta­tion, ex­e­cu­tion and pri­ori­ti­sa­tion. Ex­cus­es are nor­malised with the end re­sults be­ing what it is.

George Comis­siong, pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ic Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NAAATT) con­firmed that his or­gan­i­sa­tion got an ex­ten­sion of the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um (To­ba­go) un­til the track at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um track is re­layed. More­over, the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um will be closed from ear­ly March af­ter the Carif­ta Tri­als for re­lay­ing. All track and field meets for the re­main­der of the 2024 sea­son will be at the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um.

An­oth­er cru­el re­al­i­ty is the po­lit­i­cal machi­na­tions sur­round­ing lo­cal foot­ball as the emer­gence of the FI­FA-im­posed Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee ap­pears im­mi­nent. TTFA elec­tions it is said will be in March. The chances of this hap­pen­ing may de­pend on cer­tain FI­FA con­di­tion­al­ties be­ing met. One can spec­u­late as to if these con­di­tion­al­ties aren't met what then- will the man­date of the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee be fur­ther ex­tend­ed?

If you take an ob­jec­tive look at sports here in Trinidad and To­ba­go, the hope and ex­cite­ment of a brand new year can quick­ly be­come "doom and gloom" as the cru­el re­al­i­ty ap­pears stark.

Hope springs eter­nal or it should - a week ago we wel­comed a new year with ex­pressed hope for a bright and pros­per­ous new year. How­ev­er, the war is on­go­ing with the sys­tems that are sup­posed to serve peo­ple, are serv­ing it­self/them­selves.

There is a bal­ance that many lead­ers don't seem to get right. That is the vi­sion to fo­cus on the fu­ture where you can dream and have big ideas that are not con­strained by the past. While at the same time deal­ing with day-to-day re­al­i­ties. Through sport, we have an ex­tra­or­di­nary plat­form to make a mean­ing­ful dif­fer­ence in the lives of our sports­men and sports­women and sup­port them to thrive.

It's an Olympic year. Think­ing about 2024 in these ear­ly days can be daunt­ing and ex­cit­ing, all at once and in equal mea­sure. When we think about what 2024 could hold for us, there is much po­ten­tial for ex­cite­ment. Yet, there can be so much fear, doubt and con­cern. Our re­al­i­ty will be what we imag­ine it to be. Lead­ers have an op­por­tu­ni­ty dai­ly to in­flu­ence the ac­tions and be­hav­iours of oth­ers and to make peo­ple, young peo­ple, in par­tic­u­lar, see some­thing new.

Sport lead­ers need to imag­ine pos­i­tive re­al­i­ties not cru­el re­al­i­ties.