Mikel Thomas was re­placed by Sha­keel John as the al­ter­nate ath­lete on the T&T’s bob­sleigh team for the Bei­jing Win­ter Olympics in Chi­na which starts on Fri­day and runs un­til Feb­ru­ary 20.

This was con­firmed by the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) in a re­lease on Fri­day which stat­ed that the TTOC ap­proved an ur­gent re­quest that Thomas be with­drawn due to med­ical cir­cum­stances un­re­lat­ed to the strict Bei­jing Win­ter Olympics COVID-19 pro­to­cols and coun­ter­mea­sures.

It said: “The TTOC’s best wish­es go out to Mikel Thomas for his full re­cov­ery. On the ba­sis of pri­va­cy and con­fi­den­tial­i­ty, the TTOC will make no fur­ther state­ment or com­ment on the specifics of the ath­lete’s med­ical cir­cum­stances.”

How­ev­er, Thomas via a Face­book post on Sat­ur­day elab­o­rat­ed on the cir­cum­stances and ex­plained that he is do­ing well and is be­ing treat­ed.

He said: “Ear­li­er this week, I was suf­fer­ing from some chest pains. Try­ing to get some rest one night and I just couldn’t my chest was re­al­ly tight and con­gest­ed and it re­al­ly stopped me from be­ing able to rest I de­lib­er­at­ed for a long time plead­ing to my black men out there if you feel like some­thing is wrong get to the hos­pi­tal, get some help. I did that I checked in­to the emer­gency room and long sto­ry short, I have an acute case of peri­cardi­tis, which is in­for­ma­tion around the lin­ing of my heart.

“We have no idea where this come from so noth­ing is phys­i­cal­ly wrong with my heart, my lungs, my in­ter­nal sys­tem at all how­ev­er, it then to come from some sort of vi­ral dis­ease but there is no case of COVID. I have no cough, no fever, no flu, no symp­toms of any­thing. All of the blood and swabs and things that we tried to test noth­ing came up.

“It’s just some­thing that came about so we have been tam­per­ing down there is no blunt force to my chest but still, the lin­ing around my heart be­came in­flame swelling in­to my left pec (pec­toral re­gion) in­to my lym­phat­ic sys­tem in­to my neck.”

Since the di­ag­no­sis, Thomas has been on an­tibi­otics and an­ti-in­flam­ma­to­ry med­ica­tion and giv­en in­struc­tions to rest for the next three to four weeks.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the Olympic Games is in two so ob­vi­ous­ly you can tell no car­di­ol­o­gist is go­ing to al­low me to per­form at the high­est lev­el of sport es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the na­ture of what bob­sled ac­tu­al­ly re­quires, it’s sev­en sec­onds of max­i­mum ef­fort and the rest of 50 sec­onds is lit­er­al­ly with your head down mov­ing at 100 miles an hour faces G-Forces forces and 21 curves.

“It’s tough be­cause I love T&T, I’ve giv­en lit­er­al­ly my heart to my na­tion for the last 20 years. It’s been an ho­n­our to be a part of so much his­to­ry.”

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, Team TTO Chef de Mis­sion Lovie San­tana, COVID-19 Li­ai­son Of­fi­cer (CLO) Rheeza Grant, ath­letes Ax­el Browne and An­dre Mar­cano and tech­ni­cal sup­port Thomas Har­ris are en route to Chi­na and added that all re­quired trav­el arrange­ments to get John to Bei­jing are un­der­way.

It said: “The lo­gis­tics to trav­el to Bei­jing Chi­na are com­plex but the TTOC is do­ing all it can to sur­mount the chal­lenges.”

Thomas, in his post, wished the team well say­ing: “I’m ex­cit­ed for Axe and An­dre and the whole squad. I know they are go­ing to do great things.

“I’m blessed to have been able to send them off with love and noth­ing but full sup­port but had to re­lin­quish my po­si­tion due to med­ical rea­sons. I’ll be ok but my heart hurts…lit­er­al­ly.

“But my faith re­mains, in God, my na­tion, and our team.”