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Wednesday, April 2, 2025

Labastide described as selfless,

dedicated to people and country

by

Walter Alibey
1047 days ago
20220521
 Wendell Johanne Labastide, badminton coach and national official.

Wendell Johanne Labastide, badminton coach and national official.

Self­less in na­ture, hon­est, pas­sion­ate, lov­ing and ded­i­cat­ed to the bet­ter­ment of peo­ple and his coun­try, are how Wen­dell Jo­hanne Labastide, the for­mer T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) vice pres­i­dent and as­sis­tant sec­re­tary-gen­er­al was de­scribed at his fu­ner­al ser­vice at Allen Fu­ner­al Home in San­gre Grande, Friday af­ter­noon.

The lega­cy he left in the var­i­ous sport­ing cir­cles was ex­pressed by many, in­clu­sive of for­mer pres­i­dent of TTOC Bri­an Lewis, Navin Gayaper­sad, vice pres­i­dent of the T&T Bad­minton As­so­ci­a­tion, the Shut­tle­force pair of Der­win and Nan­cy Re­nales who, with Labastide’s help, was able to im­pact the lives of many in the Va­len­cia/San­gre Grande and sur­round­ing ar­eas in the sport of bad­minton.  

His sis­ter Bev­er­ly Labastide eu­lo­gised him as an in­tel­li­gent per­son with a re­mark­able abil­i­ty to re­tain in­for­ma­tion, say­ing be­cause of this, he read the law books of T&T and be­came an ex­cel­lent bush lawyer who blurt­ed out ad­vice as if he were a true lawyer.  

Out­side of that, how­ev­er, Bev­er­ly de­scribed her broth­er as re­spectable, man­ner­ly, de­cent and re­mained hum­ble in spite of whom he rubbed shoul­ders with.

Re­nales (Der­win), who shared a per­son­al friend­ship with Labastide for many years, said he gave more than 40 years of his life to sports, start­ing as a teenag­er play­ing bad­minton. Ac­cord­ing to Re­nales, a for­mer na­tion­al stand­out him­self, Wen­dell not on­ly played an in­stru­men­tal part in the for­ma­tion of the Shut­tle­force Bad­minton Club but al­so played a role of fa­ther-fig­ure and friend, coach and wardrobe man to many, who need­ed gear for prac­tice and tour­na­ments.

Re­nales’ wife Nan­cy joined the cho­rus with a glow­ing de­scrip­tion of him as a walk­ing dic­tio­nary, and she caused many to smile as she re­lat­ed Labastide’s fa­mous sto­ry of catch­ing a fish with a piece of cheese.

Mean­while, Lewis, who worked close­ly with Labastide, said his death has been a huge loss to the sport­ing fra­ter­ni­ty.

“Be­fore he was se­lect­ed on the TTOC in 1997 as a vice pres­i­dent, he was as­signed the port­fo­lio of de­vel­op­ment. He was al­so as­signed to ad­dress and deal with af­fil­i­ate re­la­tions and schol­ar­ships, a role he em­braced tire­less­ly and un­wa­ver­ing­ly and re­gard­less of what you asked him to do, he al­ways ap­proached it with a can-do at­ti­tude.

“He had a sense of hu­mour through the many dif­fi­cult mo­ments, which was one of his char­ac­ter­is­tics and at­trib­ut­es. Wen­dell was al­so a friend, some­one you can trust, some­one you can con­fide in and some­one you could de­pend on to give ob­jec­tive analy­sis and as­sess­ment of any sit­u­a­tion,” Lewis said. 


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