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Thursday, February 27, 2025

Lewis: CYGTT 2021 can be catalyst post COVID-19

by

Nigel Simon - Senior Sports Reporter
1799 days ago
20200327
Brian Lewis

Brian Lewis

"There is life af­ter COVID19 and the COVID19 pan­dem­ic and I see the CYGTT2021 as play­ing a very im­por­tant part in be­ing a cat­a­lyst for the post-COVID19 pan­dem­ic life and era."

This was the view of T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee pres­i­dent Bri­an Lewis as the world con­tin­ues to strug­gle with the pan­dem­ic.

On Tues­day, In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee (IOC) pres­i­dent Thomas Bach and Japan­ese Prime Min­is­ter Abe Shin­zo said that the chang­ing sit­u­a­tion of the in­ter­na­tion­al coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) out­break forced the IOC to post­pone the 2020 Olympics de­spite his con­fi­dence that Tokyo or­ga­niz­ers could put on the Olympics safe­ly.

The Games “must be resched­uled to a date be­yond 2020 but not lat­er than sum­mer 2021, to safe­guard the health of the ath­letes, every­body in­volved in the Olympic Games and the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty”, the IOC and the Tokyo 2020 Or­gan­is­ing Com­mit­tee said lat­er in a joint state­ment.

The Olympic Games and Par­a­lympic Games will con­tin­ue to be called the “Olympic and Par­a­lympic Games Tokyo 2020” even when they are held next year, and the Olympic flame will stay in Japan “as a bea­con of hope to the world dur­ing these trou­bled times”.

Oth­er Olympics — 1916, 1940 and 1944 — have been can­celled be­cause of war, but none have ever been post­poned for any rea­son, let alone a rene­gade virus that has ac­count­ed for more than 375,000 cas­es world­wide, with num­bers grow­ing ex­po­nen­tial­ly.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia Sports fol­low­ing the post­pone­ment of the 2020 Olympic Games, Lewis said: "The Com­mon­wealth Youth Games Trin­ba­go (CYGT) 2021 to be held from Au­gust 1 - 7 and ti­tled "Chang­ing Lives for the Bet­ter", can be a shin­ing light com­ing to us all.

He added, "I think that af­ter the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic and the dev­as­ta­tion and hav­oc it is present­ly wreak­ing around the world even here in T&T has end­ed, the CYGT2021 has sure­ly tak­en on added sig­nif­i­cance due to the post­pone­ment of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games."

Lewis said, " The whole con­cept of the bid was dig­i­tal, youth and young peo­ple-cen­tred and the need to be in­no­v­a­tive and cre­ative and trans­for­ma­tion­al was the core of the bid and the in­ten­tion was to al­ways do things dif­fer­ent­ly and in a very cre­ative and in­no­v­a­tive way, and I think that even though the IOC has not in­di­cat­ed when the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games ex­act­ly will be If per­chance the Tokyo Olympic Games be­ing staged next year is with­in the same Ju­ly/Au­gust pe­ri­od as was card­ed for this year, I see the Com­mon­wealth Youth Games com­pli­ment­ing that event.

"We can have view­ing par­ties with big screens na­tion­wide help­ing to make it a tremen­dous ex­pe­ri­ence for the young ath­letes who will be com­ing from the 71 Com­mon­wealth Coun­tries to com­pete across nine sport­ing dis­ci­plines.

"So the CYGT2021 of­fers a lot of op­por­tu­ni­ties and I think by next year hope­ful­ly, the world will be kind of get­ting back to some sem­blance of nor­mal­cy."

Con­cern­ing the ef­fects of the COVID-19 virus, Lewis replied, "I think that it has changed many things for­ev­er and I think that events, es­pe­cial­ly for young peo­ple like the CYG, would be an im­por­tant thing."

"From the per­spec­tive of the econ­o­my, tourism, hos­pi­tal­i­ty, en­ter­tain­ment and events man­age­ment sec­tor in T&T are cur­rent­ly tak­ing a sig­nif­i­cant hit and an in­flux of 2000-plus vis­i­tors will boost the econ­o­my of T&T. So the CYGTT2021 is some­thing that can be hap­pen­ing at the ap­pro­pri­ate time when we have got­ten past the bat­tle that we are cur­rent­ly in now with re­gards to de­feat­ing COVID-19.

Lewis not­ed that one of the sports that was re­cent­ly ap­proved by the Com­mon­wealth Games Fed­er­a­tion (CGF) which they hope to have the ad­di­tion of is Moun­tain Bike and E-Sports.

"Again the choice of sports was aimed at en­er­gis­ing the games and tar­get­ing a dif­fer­ent youth de­mo­graph­ic out­side of the tra­di­tion­al sports like swim­ming, aquat­ics, box­ing, beach vol­ley­ball, cy­cling, rug­by sev­ens, net­ball, and ten­nis, so there is a sig­nif­i­cant op­por­tu­ni­ty and I am look­ing for­ward with ex­cite­ment.

"I be­lieve the Com­mon­wealth Games Fed­er­a­tion, its Com­mon­wealth Games (CG) sports move­ment, and the Com­mon­wealth brand needs to dif­fer­en­ti­ate it­self and be very in­no­v­a­tive in terms of mak­ing the Com­mon­wealth sports brand more rel­e­vant, more ex­cit­ing and more dy­nam­ic."

"The Com­mon­wealth Youth Games T&T 2021 was in­tend­ed to be a cat­a­lyst for the trans­for­ma­tion of the CG sports brand.

Con­cern­ing the new dates for the Tokyo Olympics clash­ing with oth­er ma­jor sport­ing events next year, Lewis was quick to note that the IOC has not at this point in­di­cat­ed which dates they have moved the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games too in 2021 while there are sev­er­al oth­er ma­jor events on the sched­ule, but he still con­sid­ers the Com­mon­wealth Youth Games a pri­or­i­ty."

'We al­ready have the Caribbean Games (June 30 - Ju­ly 4); Ju­nior Pan Amer­i­can Games (June 5 - 19); the IAAF Track & Field World Cham­pi­onship (Au­gust 6 -15); the FI­NA World Swim­ming and Aquat­ics Cham­pi­onship (Ju­ly 16 - Au­gust 1), in ad­di­tion to the Com­mon­wealth Youth Games which is in my view the flag­ship event for the Com­mon­wealth Games Fed­er­a­tion.

"I know that some peo­ple feel that yes the big Com­mon­wealth Games which is sched­uled for Birm­ing­ham, Eng­land in 2022, but in the con­text of at­tract­ing youth and bring­ing young peo­ple in­to the sport and un­der­stand­ing an ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the Com­mon­wealth brand, the Com­mon­wealth Youth Games is it."

"The IOC has on­ly con­firmed that the Olympic Games will not be held this year, but al­so that it will not be lat­er than 2021, so you know its kind of un­fair and puts all the oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions which have al­ready sched­uled their 2021 events at a dis­ad­van­tage. I am not aware that the IOC in its con­sul­ta­tions would have reached out to the CGF to find out that these are some of the sce­nar­ios that they were look­ing at and ask­ing the com­mon­wealth Games fed­er­a­tion what they have on their sched­ule for 2021 and 2022 cal­en­dar.

"It's a bit un­for­tu­nate that the IOC would have sev­er­al fed­er­a­tions in­clud­ing the CGF at a dis­ad­van­tage be­cause these or­gan­i­sa­tions have al­ready es­tab­lished dates on their cal­en­dar, the CGF is not part of the IOC eco-sys­tem like the Pan Am Games and oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions that are part of the IOC eco-sys­tem.

So I think there is a chal­lenge the CGF will have to ac­cept, and face up and rise to in terms of the CYGT&T2021 and even Birm­ing­ham 2022. Its al­so go­ing to be a chal­lenge for the CG as­so­ci­a­tions in the var­i­ous coun­tries, some of them who al­so dou­ble up as their re­spec­tive na­tions na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee, be­cause this is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for them to show a sig­nif­i­cant com­mit­ment to the youth and young peo­ple in their coun­tries and to the com­mon­wealth brand. I don't see any rea­son why CYG should not be suc­cess­ful in 2021 when T&T is host­ing it."


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