The Caribbean, though a small re­gion, has pro­duced nu­mer­ous out­stand­ing ath­letes, par­tic­u­lar­ly in track and field. At the end of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the re­gion had at­tained a to­tal medal count of 391 (129 gold, 124 sil­ver and 138 bronze). Cu­ba se­cured the most wins (233), fol­lowed by Ja­maica (88). In the Par­a­lympics, the re­gion now has a to­tal of 166 medals (69 gold, 41 sil­ver and 56 bronze), Cu­ba and Ja­maica once more be­ing the lead­ers.

A close in­spec­tion of our suc­cess­es at the elite lev­el will show that this is main­ly in in­di­vid­ual sports. Team sport re­veals a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. Crick­et is prob­a­bly where we have had the great­est suc­cess with a to­tal of three fi­nal ap­pear­ances in the World Cup se­ries, with two wins. In the Net­ball World Cup, which has ex­ist­ed since 1963, Trinidad and To­ba­go has one win, a run­ner-up plac­ing and a third place. Ja­maica has se­cured three third places and no oth­er Caribbean is­land has made it to the top three.

Soc­cer is the most pop­u­lar team sport across the re­gion, yet we have on­ly seen Ja­maica, Trinidad and To­ba­go and Cu­ba se­cure a sin­gle World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion each. The Ja­maica Rug­by Sev­ens team made his­to­ry this year for be­ing the first se­nior men’s team in our re­gion to qual­i­fy for two World Cup events. Crick­et is the on­ly team sport where we com­pete as a re­gion and not as in­di­vid­ual coun­tries. One may want to ex­plore this fur­ther to see how this mod­el con­tributes to suc­cess. But that is not my fo­cus to­day.

An es­sen­tial in­gre­di­ent in elite ath­lete de­vel­op­ment is ex­po­sure to con­tin­u­ous com­pe­ti­tion. In the larg­er Caribbean is­lands, there is or­gan­ised com­pe­ti­tion at pri­ma­ry school, high school, col­le­giate and club lev­els for the tra­di­tion­al sports.

In Ja­maica, sprint­ing suc­cess is of­ten at­trib­uted to the ex­is­tence of the boys’ and girls’ high school cham­pi­onships. For the non-tra­di­tion­al team sports, com­pe­ti­tion may con­sist of a few clubs com­pet­ing against one an­oth­er. The com­po­si­tion of the na­tion­al teams for many of these non-tra­di­tion­al sports is ath­letes of Caribbean her­itage who grew up, train and com­pete in the de­vel­oped world.

In the small­er Caribbean is­lands, ex­po­sure to com­pe­ti­tion is even less. Re­gion­al tour­na­ments are lim­it­ed, with the cost to host be­ing a bar­ri­er, along with the cost for teams to trav­el. Many coach­es and sports ad­min­is­tra­tors lament the fact that more ex­po­sure through com­pe­ti­tion is not avail­able.

When com­pet­ing in a small pool, ath­letes will rapid­ly learn the strengths and weak­ness­es of their com­peti­tors and they will peak and rapid­ly plateau in the lo­cal con­text. For those who make it to star sta­tus in their col­leges, they may sit com­fort­ably as “king of their do­main” un­til they are ex­posed to com­pe­ti­tion out­side the coun­try and the re­al­i­ty that they have a long way to go sets in. So, in­stead of try­ing to take teams out of the coun­try, why not de­vel­op a frame­work that brings the com­pe­ti­tion to the coun­try on a rou­tine ba­sis? Mar­ry sport and tourism.

The more com­mon view of sports tourism is cen­tred around large-scale tour­na­ments draw­ing spec­ta­tors to the re­gion. How­ev­er, some­thing as sim­ple as col­le­giate teams and sports clubs vis­it­ing for friend­ly com­pe­ti­tion and train­ing with lo­cal teams is al­so an ex­cel­lent mod­el for sport tourism. Sport or­gan­i­sa­tions should be work­ing with the tourist boards and ho­tels to cre­ate pack­ages that tar­get this po­ten­tial mar­ket.

At The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Mona Cam­pus, we have re­ceived and ac­com­mo­dat­ed col­le­giate re­quests for win­ter train­ing camps for swim­ming, sum­mer sprint camps and, most re­cent­ly, a col­le­giate rug­by tour. The Rat­tlesnakes, an all-col­le­giate rug­by team from Texas, in June 2022, com­plet­ed a short sport tourism stint in Ja­maica. This was co­or­di­nat­ed by the Ja­maica Rug­by Foot­ball Union and con­sist­ed of three match­es against a Ja­maican de­vel­op­men­tal squad with teams vis­it­ing tourist sites in their down­time. Coach­es, ath­letes, and ref­er­ees could in­ter­act, share and com­pare ex­pe­ri­ences in friend­ly at­mos­phere. Fam­i­ly mem­bers who ac­com­pa­nied the team al­so en­joyed the beach and oth­er tourist at­trac­tions but, for some, their best ex­pe­ri­ence was at­tend­ing the match­es and in­ter­act­ing with the lo­cal com­mu­ni­ty.

For a rug­by team from one of the Caribbean is­lands to vis­it Texas for friend­ly com­pe­ti­tion, we would have to be­gin with se­cur­ing visas for 25 to 28 per­sons, fol­lowed by se­cur­ing mon­ey to cov­er air­fare, ac­com­mo­da­tion, meals and ground trans­porta­tion. Com­pare this to the cost of rent­ing a play­ing field (if the sport does not have a prop­er home ground), sup­ply­ing two teams with hy­dra­tion flu­ids and on­site med­ical cov­er­age. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the ex­po­sure can now be for 50 in­stead of 25 de­pend­ing on the num­ber of match­es or­gan­ised and if we charge an en­trance fee, we earn rev­enues. Why are we not fo­cused, there­fore, on at­tract­ing vis­it­ing teams every month? Next time we com­plain about lack of ex­po­sure, take a pause and ap­ply a broad­er brush to the con­cept of ex­po­sure.

Dr Roopc­hand Mar­tin is the Head of the Mona Acad­e­my of Sport