A drop-off in ath­letes reach­ing elite lev­els of com­pe­ti­tion is be­ing iden­ti­fied as one of the rea­sons for Trinidad and To­ba­go’s re­cent dwin­dling for­tunes at the Olympic Games.

T&T’s 17-mem­ber con­tin­gent end­ed the just con­clud­ed games in Paris, France, on Sun­day with­out a medal, mak­ing it the sec­ond game in a row that T&T has failed to mount the podi­um in a sin­gle event.

Team TTO was rep­re­sent­ed by 30 ath­letes in Tokyo in 2021.

Chair­man of the Sport Com­pa­ny (SporTT), Lar­ry Ro­many, said those num­bers and re­sults point to a trend that be­came ap­par­ent much fur­ther back.

“One of the things I can tell you is hap­pen­ing: there’s a shrink­ing in the num­ber of peo­ple who are par­tic­i­pat­ing in sport at the high­est lev­el,” Ro­many de­clared at a Min­istry of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment me­dia con­fer­ence at the VIP room of the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um on Tues­day.

He added, “This prob­lem start­ed to oc­cur maybe about twelve to fif­teen years ago, when we weren’t get­ting as many peo­ple par­tic­i­pat­ing in sports.” We need­ed to go out and cap­ture da­ta from the pop­u­la­tion about who is play­ing sport, how many, and at what lev­el they are play­ing sport.”

“When you look at ath­lete de­vel­op­ment, it’s a very com­plex thing. And when you talk about ath­lete de­vel­op­ment to­wards the Olympics, it’s even more com­pli­cat­ed be­cause it takes on av­er­age ten years to pro­duce an Olympic cham­pi­on, and then again, not every­one is go­ing to be a cham­pi­on.”

Ro­many joined a pan­el of top-rank­ing lo­cal sport ad­min­is­tra­tors, led by Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Sham­fa Cud­joe-Lewis, to as­sess T&T’s per­for­mance in Paris 2024.

SporTT Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer (CEO) Ja­son Williams, Head of Sport De­vel­op­ment Justin Lat­apy-George, and Head of Elite Per­for­mance & Well­be­ing To­bias Ot­t­ley were the oth­er mem­bers of the pan­el.

Ro­many point­ed out what he thought were some of the root caus­es re­spon­si­ble for the dwin­dling num­bers, specif­i­cal­ly out­dat­ed meth­ods.

He said, “In the past, tal­ent iden­ti­fi­ca­tion has al­ways been done based on per­for­mance. You tell peo­ple you are go­ing to pick teams for foot­ball, crick­et, and so forth for the new sea­son, so come and try out. Try-outs have been the ac­tu­al way that we iden­ti­fy tal­ent. But that’s not the way to iden­ti­fy tal­ent in a pop­u­la­tion.”

He con­tin­ued, “What we plan to do is what is called phys­i­o­log­i­cal tal­ent iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, where you don’t iden­ti­fy tal­ent in a spe­cif­ic sport; what you iden­ti­fy are phys­i­o­log­i­cal ma­tri­ces—strength, pow­er, en­durance—and from that, you can iden­ti­fy where they should be po­si­tioned.”

“When you test the right things—height, jump­ing abil­i­ty, re­flex, flex­i­bil­i­ty, and vi­sion—you get peo­ple who are much more tal­ent­ed or have a propen­si­ty for do­ing things that are far greater than every­body else.”

Ro­many, who was ap­point­ed SporTT Chair­man ear­li­er this month, said the Min­istry of Sport’s iChoose Sport pro­gramme is the per­fect plat­form to rem­e­dy this coun­try’s ail­ing Olympic for­tunes.

“When I was asked to join SporTT, one of the things that im­pressed me was the iChoose Sports pro­gramme. From where I sit, it’s a bril­liant pro­gramme. It gives us ac­cess to every sin­gle child in every sin­gle com­mu­ni­ty across Trinidad and To­ba­go. And I don’t feel that we should test it on three thou­sand or ten thou­sand. If it’s two hun­dred and fifty thou­sand chil­dren we have, we should do it for all, and we will do it on a con­sis­tent ba­sis un­til we get peo­ple in­ter­est­ed.”

Min­is­ter Cud­joe-Lewis said that de­spite her be­lief that T&T spent among the most mon­ey on ath­lete de­vel­op­ment and sup­port of its Caribbean na­tions, in the re­gion of $400 mil­lion be­tween 2015 and 2024, there needs to be a mean­ing­ful re­view of the way things are be­ing done.

“As far as I am con­cerned, our chal­lenge as it re­lates to medalling and get­ting to where we need to be in sport doesn’t rest sole­ly with pro­vid­ing tax­pay­er dol­lars to our ath­letes or with pro­vid­ing fi­nan­cial sup­port. It speaks to the need to re­view our strat­e­gy; it speaks to the need to re­group; it speaks to the need for in­tro­spec­tion,” she said.

“As we know, elite ath­letes are not made in an Olympic year. It takes time, ef­fort, and re­sources. As a gov­ern­ment, I wish to pledge our com­mit­ment to con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing tech­ni­cal and fi­nan­cial sup­port to our ath­letes, to the sport­ing fra­ter­ni­ty, and to the na­tion­al gov­ern­ing bod­ies.”

Cud­joe-Lewis added, “When ath­letes go out to com­pete, they go out to give their very best. We didn’t come out of Paris 2024 with the re­sults that we would have liked, and of course that calls for con­cern and in­tro­spec­tion from all the stake­hold­ers.”

Both Cud­joe-Lewis and Ro­many be­lieved that there al­so needs to be a shift in the mind­set of the adult pop­u­la­tion, which has in­creas­ing­ly re­strict­ed chil­dren from par­tic­i­pa­tion in sport, iden­ti­fy­ing gaps in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, es­pe­cial­ly those that dis­cour­age chil­dren from be­com­ing and re­main­ing ac­tive­ly en­gaged in sport.

Ro­many said, “Play­ing has been trained out of us. Every­thing in schools is about the cog­ni­tive. Just learn­ing. But it’s more than that.”

When asked about whether the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion spelled a dif­fi­cult fu­ture for T&T at the elite and Olympic lev­el, he dis­agreed.

He said, “The ath­letes that are there now are re­al­ly the ones that are pre-se­lect­ed to go to the 2028 Olympics. We need to make sure that we keep them in play and that we sup­port them. Un­til we get to the point where we have fifty or six­ty ath­letes that are com­pet­i­tive, we fol­low up on the ones that we have and make sure they get what we need, and that will do it.”