Trinidad and To­ba­go's 53rd Carif­taGames 73 ath­letes, 18 of­fi­cials, and some 100-plus sup­port­ers ar­rived safe­ly at the Mau­rice Bish­op In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in St George's, Grena­da Thurs­day evening.

The con­tin­gent's de­par­ture was de­layed by a lit­tle over an hour; orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled to leave Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port at 8.45 pm, Caribbean Air­lines char­ter flight BW 8432 left the run­way around 9.40 pm for the 25-minute flight to the Spice Isle.

Some mem­bers of the team be­gan their jour­ney at 2 am on Thurs­day but the group of en­thu­si­as­tic ath­letes and their par­ents, sib­lings and oth­er sup­port­ers re­mained in high spir­its.

Ear­li­er this week, Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ics Ad­min­is­tra­tions of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NAAATT) pres­i­dent Ephraim Ser­rette pre­dict­ed a five-medal im­prove­ment on the team's 2025 Carif­ta medal haul at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um Games, speak­ing Thurs­day evening in the de­par­ture lounge, team man­ag­er Cuquie Melville con­curred.

"We have a very strong team this year. The ex­pec­ta­tion go­ing in­to Carif­ta2026 is very high. We got 25 medals last year and with the show­ing we have seen this year, we be­lieve we have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to sur­pass that this year.

"Over the past weeks, we had our prepa­ra­tion ses­sions where we had train­ing, we had work­shops al­so mo­ti­va­tion­al ses­sions. We had Jereem Richards and Leah Bertrand come in; they are just back from the World In­doors. We al­so had Shel­don Ma­son, who did an ex­cep­tion­al job as well in mo­ti­vat­ing the ath­letes."

Melville says the all-round ap­proach has al­ready borne fruit

"We had the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Carif­taPrep meet and at that meet we did see sev­er­al of our ath­letes at­tain their per­son­al best," Melville in­ti­mat­ed, "So we see that it's work­ing, in terms of get­ting in­to their minds so that they could be­lieve that they could do any­thing and that they could match up to the rest of the world"

Trinidad and To­ba­go Track and Field Sup­port­ers Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer, En­ri­co Came­jo, says the group's largest ever con­tin­gent trav­el­ling with the Carif­tateam will do its best to make the Ki­rani James Ath­let­ics Sta­di­um a home away from home for the young Team TTO.

"We went all out, ded­i­cat­ed our time to make sure these par­tic­u­lar games you're go­ing to hear us, we have songs for the team, we have flags, we have a colour for every sin­gle day of CARIF­TA," Came­jo boast­ed.

"Trinidad and To­ba­go is go­ing to be rep­re­sent­ed well and whether gold, sil­ver or bronze, we are go­ing to sup­port every sin­gle ath­lete there in the Ki­rani James Sta­di­um."