Team Trinidad and To­ba­go (TTO) cy­clists yet again flew the na­tion­al flag with vi­sion, tal­ent, pa­tri­o­tism, pride and dis­tinc­tion.

They won medals, in­clud­ing gold at the 2025 Pan Amer­i­can Track Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships at the Na­tion­al Olympic Velo­drome in Asun­ción, Paraguay. Team TTO fin­ished sec­ond in the medal stand­ings with four gold, one sil­ver and one bronze. The pan ver­sion of the na­tion­al an­them played four times.

Nicholas Paul led the way with three gold medals (two in­di­vid­ual and one team sprint) and one sil­ver. Teneil Camp­bell (one gold and one bronze). Ryan D’Abreau, Njisane Phillip and Paul earned T&T a gold medal in the Team Sprint.

The Pan Am Track Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships is the pin­na­cle of cy­cling ex­cel­lence in the Amer­i­c­as. The pow­er­ful and rich USA topped the medal stand­ings with eight gold, three sil­ver and two bronze.

Over the week­end, not for the first time in T&T our youth and young peo­ple rep­re­sent­ed this coun­try with dis­tinc­tion. The ex­cel­lent per­for­mances of Team TTO cy­clists come in a pe­ri­od of na­tion­al elec­tion when the sto­ry­lines are about who lies and who tells the truth. As far as those cit­i­zens who have no par­tic­u­lar al­le­giance are con­cerned, hon­esty is in short sup­ply.

But as al­ways, sport pro­vides pos­i­tive head­lines when T&T needs it most.

Cred­it the Team TTO cy­clists. Their in­domitable will to suc­ceed against the odds. Their per­se­ver­ance, com­mit­ment and ded­i­ca­tion. The back­sto­ry of per­son­al bat­tles. But yet they pressed on to pre­vail on the lone­ly road to ex­cel­lence and high per­for­mance.

When­ev­er the is­sue of sup­port or the lack of it comes up, there is the ten­den­cy to roll out sta­tis­tics and num­bers to re­but claims of a lack of sup­port. De­ci­sion-mak­ers and lead­ers take it as a per­son­al at­tack.

This isn’t to say there is ze­ro sup­port. The ques­tion to be asked: Is the sup­port enough, con­sis­tent and time­ly? In par­tic­u­lar, for our elite and high-per­for­mance ath­letes. Ath­letes are used here as a gen­er­al de­scrip­tion to in­clude swim­mers, cy­clists, box­ers et al. Let’s be clear, there are in­di­vid­u­als in the sys­tem who pro­vide sin­cere sup­port be it strength and con­di­tion­ing train­ers, mas­sage ther­a­pists, sport psy­chol­o­gists, par­ents, guardians, ex­tend­ed fam­i­ly and qui­et fi­nan­cial sup­port­ers. They all know the truth as they them­selves pro­vide the need­ed sup­port at sig­nif­i­cant sac­ri­fice.

Why is it so hard to con­vince T&T of the im­por­tance of pro­vid­ing the nec­es­sary in­vest­ment for our tal­ent­ed ath­letes?

Even dur­ing this elec­tion sea­son, there is very lit­tle be­ing said about the im­por­tance of the sport in­dus­try as one of the key pil­lars of so­cial and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment. The sport in­dus­try should be spo­ken about in the same way as art, busi­ness, cul­ture and tech­nol­o­gy.

The sport in­dus­try can con­tribute to the eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of T&T. It can gen­er­ate em­ploy­ment and for­eign ex­change, in par­tic­u­lar, youth em­ploy­ment.

I con­tin­ue to ad­vo­cate for the val­ue of the sport in­dus­try to T&T.

Glob­al sports have de­vel­oped in­to an eco­nom­ic dri­ving force that con­tributes to cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for na­tion­al rev­enues and stim­u­lat­ing in­vest­ments. As an ex­am­ple the sports econ­o­my as an eco­nom­ic and so­cial en­gine, has seen the Gulf coun­tries, in­clude sport as a key dri­ver of eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion poli­cies to sup­port the growth of their non-oil sec­tors.

Come on T&T, let’s get se­ri­ous about cre­at­ing our place and space in the 600 bil­lion US Glob­al sport in­dus­try.