Crit­i­cised for a medal-less Olympics in Tokyo, Japan in 2021, T&T’s ath­letes have an­swered most ap­pro­pri­ate­ly in sports on­ly a year lat­er (2022).

Sham­fa Cud­joe, Min­is­ter of Sports and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment dur­ing her speech at the An­nu­al Awards of the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ic Ad­min­is­tra­tion (NAAAs) at the Ho­tel Radis­son in Port-of-Spain on Sat­ur­day night, said the ath­letes made peo­ple eat their words, as she re­flect­ed on a year in which sprint­er Jereem ‘The Dream’ Richards forced the world to lis­ten to the coun­try’s na­tion­al an­them on the na­tion­al in­stru­ment—the steel­pan, when he won the 200 me­tres fi­nal at the Com­mon­wealth Games in Birm­ing­ham, Eng­land.

Richards, a na­tive of Point Fortin al­so won the coun­try’s first-ever 400-me­tre gold medal at the World Ath­let­ic In­door Cham­pi­onships at the Stark Are­na in Ser­bia in a time of 45.00 sec­onds flat. In ad­di­tion, the quar­tet of Jer­rod El­cock, Er­ic Har­ri­son Jr, Kion Ben­jamin, and Kyle Greaux fin­ished in a sea­son’s best 38.70 sec­onds in the 4 x 100 me­tres re­lay to take the sil­ver medal in the fi­nal.

On Sat­ur­day, Richards was ad­judged the Se­nior Male Ath­lete of the Year and Michelle Lee Ahye, a win­ner of the Na­tion­al Cham­pi­onships 100 me­tres sprint and semi­fi­nal­ist at the World Cham­pi­onships in the same event, was vot­ed as the Fe­male Ath­lete of the Year for 2022.

They were among many oth­er achiev­ers in track and field last year, in­clud­ing three ad­min­is­tra­tors—Jinelle Ed­wards, Michelle Stoute-Lopez and John An­dal­cio be­ing ap­point­ed to top tech­ni­cal po­si­tions at the Carif­ta Games.

Cud­joe de­scribed it as a wa­ter­shed year for track and field from ju­nior to se­nior lev­els. “This year was a wa­ter­shed year for ath­let­ics and I’m be­ing very diplo­mat­ic, not like the pre­vi­ous pres­i­dent who said the NAAAs or the ath­let­ic dis­ci­pline out-per­formed all the oth­er dis­ci­plines this year. I am Min­is­ter of Sports so I would sim­ply say this year was wa­ter­shed year, as we saw the likes of Jereem Richards, Akan­ni His­lop, Machel Ce­de­nio and all oth­er ath­letes who broke records, blaze trails and brought ho­n­our and glo­ry to T&T, es­pe­cial­ly fol­low­ing what we ex­pe­ri­enced in 2021 at the Olympics and all the neg­a­tives that the ath­letes had to face.”

“We came back and showed per­se­ver­ance and per­sis­tence and made peo­ple eat their words. I think it was a re­al­ly good come­back to see our ath­letes com­ing out of the dark­ness of 2021 and shin­ing so bright­ly in 2022. And not on­ly our ath­letes, but our ad­min­is­tra­tors, the man­agers and every­body who put their hands, minds and heads to­wards such an out­stand­ing per­for­mance in 2022, de­serve to give them­selves a round of ap­plause.”

She laud­ed the NAAAs for their hard work and ded­i­ca­tion to­ward de­vel­op­ing young tal­ent and en­hanc­ing the per­for­mances of ath­letes, not­ing that in Jan­u­ary last year when it was de­cid­ed to roll out sports from the stran­gle­hold of the covid-19 pan­dem­ic, the NAAAs was al­ways ready to go. “Even when the COVID pro­to­cols were in full, we were telling Na­tion­al Gov­ern­ing Bod­ies (NG­Bs) to be very care­ful and yet the NAAAs was al­ways up and run­ning and we had meets at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um and the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um,” Cud­joe ex­plained.

Since then, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley sought to tight­en re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion ties with the re­gion’s ath­let­ic pow­er­house -Ja­maica, by mak­ing arrange­ments with the Ja­maican gov­ern­ment to as­sist T&T in ath­let­ics.

Cud­joe said T&T’s part in the agree­ment be­tween the coun­tries is to help Ja­maica in the sport of swim­ming and oth­er dis­ci­plines. Be­cause of this, a team from T&T is set to leave for Ja­maica soon on a sports mis­sion.

Cud­joe said this agree­ment was fol­lowed by oth­er arrange­ments for the top ath­letes at schools in Ja­maica and through­out the Caribbean, to at­tend all in­vi­ta­tion­al meets here in T&T, while top lo­cal ath­letes at schools here will be ac­cept­ed to par­tic­i­pate at meets in Ja­maica.