T&T sprint­er Jereem Richards re­mains skep­ti­cal of fly­ing de­spite the Di­a­mond League re­leas­ing a new pro­vi­sion­al cal­en­dar on May 12. The short­ened ver­sion of the sea­son will see meets tak­ing place in dif­fer­ent cities al­most every two days in Au­gust, Sep­tem­ber and Oc­to­ber.

“I would def­i­nite­ly be skep­ti­cal about trav­el­ling to so many coun­tries. It’s tak­ing a risk. In some in­stances, it might be a risk that I have to take but in the event that I have to trav­el all I could pos­si­bly do is just be as safe as I can pos­si­bly be,” Richards told Guardian Me­dia Sports as he helped out at a Re­pub­lic Bank spon­sored ham­per dri­ve, on Sat­ur­day.

This was at the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ad­min­is­tra­tive Pro­fes­sion­als of T&T (NAAP), NSA House, Wood­brook, Port-of-Spain.

How­ev­er, Richards was hap­py to be in T&T when the bor­ders were closed on May 22 as op­posed to his train­ing base in Al­aba­ma in the Unit­ed States.

The 2017 World Cham­pi­onships gold medal­list said, “I would def­i­nite­ly say that I am blessed that I had been in T&T when the lock­down start­ed be­cause I would have missed my fam­i­ly and I would have missed my friends. It would have been hard to be away from these peo­ple who I hold so close to my heart.”

While Richards was in favour of post­pon­ing the Ju­ly-Au­gust Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games to en­sure the pro­tec­tion of hu­man lives, the 26-year-old said it would be dis­ap­point­ing if the event, resched­uled for Ju­ly 23 to Au­gust 8 in 2021, is can­celled al­to­geth­er.

This week the In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee (IOC) pres­i­dent Thomas Bach said if the Games can­not be held in 2021 it will be can­celled.

"If the Olympics is can­celled in 2021, I will be very dis­ap­point­ed but at the end of the day it’s all about be­ing safe and the sur­vival of hu­mans. If we go out there and try to push some­thing when it’s not safe for us to com­pete, it could be detri­men­tal to a lot of peo­ple," Richards said.

A can­cel­la­tion could spell the end of the Olympic dream for T&T karate­ka Chen­nise Charles, who has spent the last 12 months try­ing to qual­i­fy. It would be an his­toric mo­ment if the Games do go ahead be­cause for the first-time karate will fea­ture. How­ev­er, the sport is not on the sched­ule for the Paris 2024 Games.

“It would re­al­ly crush my heart,” the 26-year-old said. “This is every karate­ka’s one shot at an Olympic dream. I have come to terms in my mind that the can­cel­la­tion may be a pos­si­bil­i­ty and if that hap­pens I will shift my fo­cus in help­ing the prepa­ra­tion to car­ry some youths to the Ju­nior Olympic Games.”

While the ver­dict is out though, Charles, who is the on­ly karate­ka from this coun­try to be ranked in the top 100 in the world, con­tin­ues to plan and pre­pare to qual­i­fy for the 2021 Games. A se­ries of in­juries in Feb­ru­ary proved to be a stum­bling block in her qual­i­fi­ca­tion jour­ney so she is hap­py to have some ex­tra time to pre­pare.

Charles, who fin­ished sev­enth at the 2019 Pan Amer­i­can Games said, “It re­al­ly has giv­en me more time to do re­hab and to catch up in terms of the com­pe­ti­tion as­pect of it. Any ath­lete could al­ways do with some more time. I can def­i­nite­ly use that to my ad­van­tage.”

Charles said she felt she need­ed to help those who are in need dur­ing this pan­dem­ic as such, she start­ed the ini­tia­tive called Be­yond the Medal, giv­ing away 200 ham­pers and books to 200 young ath­letes. She says it is the first in what will be a se­ries of ham­per dis­tri­b­u­tions.