The be­gin­ning and the end.

No mat­ter how much you chase the pin­na­cle of suc­cess in the world of sports al­ways re­mem­ber to ask your­self what is im­por­tant in life. We live in a world that glam­or­is­es lux­u­ry and su­per­fi­cial pop­u­lar­i­ty and that seeks to de­fine us by “who have more corn feed more fowl”. We are there­fore al­ways run­ning but nev­er ar­riv­ing.

Trin­ba­go2023 came to an end on Fri­day. From the spec­tac­u­lar Car­ni­val-themed open­ing cer­e­mo­ny on Au­gust 4 to the Car­ni­val beach par­ty-style clos­ing cer­e­mo­ny at Pi­geon Point in To­ba­go.

Trin­ba­go2023 was mag­i­cal.

Dur­ing her clos­ing ad­dress, Dame Louise Mar­tin, pres­i­dent of the Com­mon­wealth Games Fed­er­a­tion said: “For me, this has been one of the best Com­mon­wealth Youth Games ever.”

The fear of fail­ure was per­va­sive at the time but now even the most scep­ti­cal and crit­i­cal in­di­vid­u­als when the vi­sion, idea and dream of T&T sub­mit­ting a bid was first an­nounced are now bask­ing in the per­cep­tion of suc­cess. They weren’t vo­cal with their sup­port be­tween 2018 and 2021 be­cause, at that time, the ben­e­fit of hind­sight wasn’t avail­able.

Team TTO led by Nikoli Black­man cap­tured 15 medals in to­tal. The fact that in the pre­vi­ous six edi­tions, Team TTO on­ly won six in all, the turn­around left many ex­perts scratch­ing their heads but the im­por­tance of home sup­port in­spi­ra­tion must nev­er be un­der­es­ti­mat­ed.

There would be no T&T bid were it not for the un­wa­ver­ing sup­port of Min­is­ter of Sport Sham­fa Cud­joe, T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee/T&T Com­mon­wealth Games As­so­ci­a­tion (TTOC/TTC­GA) sec­re­tary gen­er­al An­nette Knott, Rheeza Grant, Chanelle Young and Kwanieze John. There must be a be­gin­ning for there to be an end.

Gen­e­sis comes be­fore Rev­e­la­tion. The im­ple­men­ta­tion and de­liv­ery phase was the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the lo­cal or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee (LOC) with Dou­glas Ca­ma­cho as chair with George Lea­cock as chair of the LOC To­ba­go Task Force.

There were a num­ber of high points dur­ing the six days of the Trin­ba­go2023 com­pe­ti­tion. One cer­tain­ly was 17-year-old Team TTO debu­tant para-ath­lete, Isa­iah Williams. This his­to­ry-mak­ing Mara­bel­la, San Fer­nan­do, res­i­dent is a por­trait of courage and re­silience and an in­domitable will. The back sto­ry of his par­tic­i­pa­tion at the Games is down to the per­se­ver­ance of Sud­hir Rames­sar, the pres­i­dent of the T&T Par­a­lympic Com­mit­tee. That Isa­iah al­most missed his life-chang­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty to rep­re­sent the red, white and black is “a sto­ry of its own”.

In an in­ter­view on Trin­ba­go2023.com web­site—Isa­iah ar­tic­u­lat­ed his ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the sig­nif­i­cance of his rep­re­sen­ta­tion and par­tic­i­pa­tion. He said the Com­mon­wealth Youth Games is not just about the thrill of com­pe­ti­tion as rep­re­sent­ing T&T for the first time is a huge ho­n­our, but he is al­so de­ter­mined to pro­mote ac­cep­tance and in­clu­siv­i­ty. Af­fect­ed by cere­bral pal­sy which im­pacts the mus­cles on the right side of his body, Isa­iah said that he recog­nis­es that rep­re­sent­ing his coun­try on the na­tion­al team is a tremen­dous op­por­tu­ni­ty.

“For me, this has been a life-chang­er—my first time on a na­tion­al team, stay­ing at ho­tels and just the whole ex­pe­ri­ence of in­ter­act­ing with oth­er ath­letes. I am will­ing to try my best to rep­re­sent my coun­try and make my fam­i­ly and my­self proud while hop­ing to be a role mod­el for oth­er peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties,” said Isa­iah.

Isa­iah’s dri­ve and de­ter­mi­na­tion serve as an in­spi­ra­tion. In many ways, the sky is now the lim­it for T&T post-Trin­ba­go2023. The mil­lion-dol­lar ques­tion is where do we go from here? The Trin­ba­go2023 de­brief will be an in­ter­est­ing one as there are many sto­ries to be TOLD.