There has nev­er been an Olympic Games dur­ing a pan­dem­ic so this year's edi­tion in Tokyo, Japan was his­toric. 

It was for the first time ever, post­poned by a year. Orig­i­nal­ly card­ed for 2020, the Tokyo Games was de­layed to this year run­ning from Ju­ly 23 to Au­gust 8 un­der the very threat of COVID-19, which caused its post­pone­ment and the death of mil­lions of peo­ple around the world.

There­fore, Tokyo 2020 was a pro­found and dif­fer­ent ex­pe­ri­ence for T&T's 33-ath­lete team an­nounced by the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC), which was led by two-time Olympic medal­list Keshorn Wal­cott. It was the largest num­ber to date for TeamT­TO at an Olympic Games who fea­tured in sev­en sports -20 men and 13 women -the most women's ath­letes ever in T&T Olympic his­to­ry.

Sprint­er Kel­ly-Ann Bap­tiste made his­to­ry al­so par­tic­i­pat­ing at her fifth Olympic Games, join­ing bronze medal Olympian George Bovell II as a five-time Olympian. Bap­tiste was al­so the first-ever women's flag-bear­er at the Games.

Ahead of the con­tin­gent's de­par­ture, the TTOC pres­i­dent had said that the ath­letes will be COVID test­ed dai­ly - if they test pos­i­tive they will be iso­lat­ed and not al­lowed to com­pete dur­ing their quar­an­tine pe­ri­od. They must wear masks ex­cept when they are com­pet­ing or eat­ing and wouldn't be al­lowed to roam the dif­fer­ent venues. There is no sight­see­ing, vis­its to restau­rants, shop­ping malls, use of pub­lic trans­port is pro­hib­it­ed as is in­ter­ac­tion or con­tact with the gen­er­al Japan­ese pub­lic. Dis­obey­ing or not com­ply­ing with the strict and strin­gent COVID-19 coun­ter­mea­sures, pro­to­cols and rules may re­sult in the ul­ti­mate sanc­tion -de­por­ta­tion by the Japan Gov­ern­ment.

Faced with fre­quent test­ing, mask man­dates and so­cial dis­tanc­ing pro­ce­dures, ba­si­cal­ly ex­ist­ing in a bub­ble, the team went medal­less for the first time since the Barcelona Games in Spain in 1992 that this coun­try had no ath­letes tak­ing the podi­um.

Added to that, de­spite all the pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures, three of T&T's con­tin­gent - two ath­letes and a coach -  test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus fol­low­ing a rou­tine Sali­va Anti­gen test at the Olympic Vil­lage. Long jumper And­wuelle Wright, 400m hur­dler Sparkle McK­night and coach Wen­dell Williams missed par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Games as a re­sult. Wright, how­ev­er, af­ter re­cov­er­ing from the virus had the ho­n­our of be­ing the flag-bear­er in the clos­ing cer­e­mo­ny.

"Of course, the per­for­mance over­all at the Tokyo 2020 Games did not meet the ex­pec­ta­tions of every­one in­clud­ing the ath­letes but you have to take it on the chin learn from it and move on. We're not go­ing to make any ex­cus­es about COVID-19. The fact is that we went to Tokyo 2020 and we went de­ter­mined with the team, the ath­letes the coach­es, every­one went de­ter­mined to give it their best and it didn't pan out on the day so we take that on the chin and we move for­ward. We learn the lessons and take on board the lessons and grow through it," said Lewis.

An­oth­er first was that the se­nior man­age­ment team of the del­e­ga­tion for this the most chal­leng­ing and com­plex Olympic Games in liv­ing mem­o­ry, com­prised of three women out of four, all un­der 40 years old. They were led by Chef de Mis­sion Lovie San­tana and in­clud­ed the manda­to­ry po­si­tion of COVID-19 Li­ai­son Of­fi­cer Rheeza Grant and Dr Naila Adams, who was the as­sis­tant to Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer  Dr Rudy Ram­sawak.

<Daniel, Hors­ford de­liv­er>

Lewis de­scribed 2021 as be­ing a tough year, say­ing: "It's been a chal­leng­ing year, a very dif­fi­cult year for the Olympic move­ment in T&T but we are no ex­cep­tion it's in a chal­leng­ing and dif­fi­cult time for the en­tire globe and the en­tire world."COVID-19, the pan­dem­ic has been re­morse­less and un­wa­ver­ing in its de­ter­mi­na­tion to take lives and it's been a sig­nif­i­cant bat­tle but while there are many downs to point to in­clud­ing loss of lives dear and close friends and col­leagues in the sport move­ment here in T&T the im­pact of COVID con­tin­ues in that team sports have not been re­leased from the lock­down and the COVID-19 re­stric­tions.

He added: The Sports move­ment, the TTOC, we con­tin­ue to work with all stake­hold­ers in terms of al­lo­cat­ing that we have to vac­ci­nate our way out of this, vac­ci­na­tion is im­por­tant. We have seen a lot of ex­am­ples from the world where vac­ci­na­tion has been key to get­ting sports back up and go­ing. Suc­cess came for T&T in the end-of-year Ju­nior Pan Amer­i­can Games in Cali, Colom­bia held from No­vem­ber 25 to De­cem­ber 5.

Long jumper Kelsey Daniel and javelin throw­er Tyriq Hors­ford emerged with medals, sil­ver and a bronze, re­spec­tive­ly.

"The fact that we were able to send a team to the Tokyo 2020 resched­uled Games which was held in 2021 to the Ju­nior Pan Amer­i­can Games. They have been a high point notwith­stand­ing all the is­sues and two gru­elling years of COVID-19 and its neg­a­tive im­pact on prepa­ra­tion, fund­ing, the econ­o­my, fi­nance etc," said Lewis.

"We had medal suc­cess there in the form of Tyriq Hors­ford and Kelsey Daniel. I think the grit and de­ter­mi­na­tion that all the ath­letes who went to the Pan Amer­i­can Games would have shown, au­gurs well for the fu­ture go­ing for­ward."

<Look­ing to the fu­ture>

Lewis, de­spite the un­pre­dictable year, re­mains op­ti­mistic for the year for T&T sports over­all.

"In the main, I look at the glass in not half emp­ty and there are many good points and good things that you can take away from 2021, the most im­por­tant thing is re­gard­less of how in­tense and how fo­cused we are on sport and sport­ing achieve­ment and sport­ing com­pe­ti­tion and try­ing to bring glo­ry and gold medals and medals to the re­pub­lic of T&T,  at the end of the day what COVID has shown al­so is what is re­al­ly im­por­tant good health, life, friends, fam­i­ly and it places every­thing in con­text. Look­ing ahead to 2022, he sees a lot of good things to look for­ward to par­tic­u­lar­ly in in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions like that of the  Com­mon­wealth Games in Eng­land and World Cham­pi­onships in the Unit­ed States.

He said: "As we look ahead to 2022, the Caribbean Games in Guade­loupe, the Com­mon­wealth Games in Birm­ing­ham, in terms of track and field, the NAAAs, un­der the new lead­er­ship so to speak of George Comis­siong and on­board peo­ple such as Je­hue Gor­don, Zwede He­witt, Ja­maal James so I think that's a good high point com­ing out of this year in terms of track and field here in T&T. Every­one, there­fore, look­ing for­ward in keen an­tic­i­pa­tion and ex­pec­ta­tion to a dif­fer­ence, a more youth­ful ori­en­ta­tion to track and field here. I mean has been built on the tremen­dous foun­da­tion and work done by Ephraim Ser­rette so I think a lot of peo­ple will be look­ing for­ward to the track and World Cham­pi­onships next year in Eu­gene, Ore­gon.

"The World FI­NA Long Course and when you look at the way Dy­lan Carter has been bounc­ing back from Tokyo 2020 au­gurs well. You saw the per­for­mances at the Ju­nior Pan Am Games with peo­ple like Nikoli Black­man, Tariq Wil­son there is a lot of promis­ing things to look for­ward to all the dark­ness and tri­als and tribu­la­tions of COVID, I an­tic­i­pate that the sports will be get­ting back up and run­ning, of course, COVID-19 will al­ways be a threat and the im­por­tance of vac­ci­nat­ing, the im­por­tance of COVID-19 safe­ty pro­to­cols and health pro­to­cols is go­ing to be im­por­tant but we have to learn to live with COVID-19 and life has to go on."

The TTOC has host­ed sev­er­al events in cel­e­brat­ing its 75th an­niver­sary in­clud­ing the on­go­ing  Team TTO 75,000 steps chal­lenge with reg­is­tra­tion ex­tend­ed to De­cem­ber 31 and will close off the year with its an­nu­al awards cer­e­mo­ny on De­cem­ber 29.