T&T stars, cy­clist Nicholas Paul and sprint­er Jereem Richards were among the ath­letes re­ceiv­ing medal bonus­es for their out­stand­ing per­for­mances at the Com­mon­wealth Games in Birm­ing­ham, Eng­land in Ju­ly.

The duo, along with mem­bers of the men’s 4x400 me­tres and men’s 4x100m re­lay teams, were ho­n­oured at the vir­tu­al T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee/T&T Com­mon­wealth Games As­so­ci­a­tion (TTOC/ TTC­GA) press con­fer­ence, yes­ter­day.

De­spite the re­cent rob­bery at Olympic House on Aber­crom­by Street in Port-of-Spain, it could not damp­en the joy­ous mo­ment of T&T’s suc­cess­ful ath­letes be­ing pre­sent­ed a com­bined sum of TT$146,200 (US$21,500) dis­closed by TTOC/TTC­GA pres­i­dent Di­ane Hen­der­son.

She said: “The Com­mon­wealth Games Birm­ing­ham, through the ath­letes, reignit­ed our dreams and brought hope to all of us. We, there­fore, ex­tend an­oth­er hearty con­grat­u­la­tion to all who rep­re­sent­ed the red, white, and black with pride.”

Paul col­lect­ed the bulk of bonus­es, US$6,000 - for gold in the men’s keirin event (US$3,000), sil­ver in men’s sprint (US$2,000) and bronze in the 1,000m time tri­al (US$1,000).

He was tru­ly grate­ful, say­ing: “I just want to say thanks to God first­ly. Sec­ond­ly, the TTOC for the love and sup­port al­ways and I just like the ini­tia­tive that you all are tak­ing to sup­port and be there for the ath­letes when­ev­er and all the time, I just want to say thanks for that. On be­half of the ath­letes, I can’t say how much thanks and ap­pre­ci­a­tion that I re­al­ly hold for you all but I just want to say thanks.”

Richards too was thank­ful and ex­pressed his ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the sup­port from the TTOC, its staff, the med­ical staff, those in the back­ground and T&T. He al­so cit­ed that the ini­tia­tive is a great mo­ti­va­tion for the cur­rent and fu­ture ath­letes, know­ing that “when you do well, you would be re­ward­ed”.

He re­ceived a to­tal of US $4,250 for his gold in the men’s 200m (US$3,000) and US$1,250 as part of the gold-medal win­ning men’s 4x400m re­lay team which in­clud­ed Dwight St Hillaire, Asa Gue­vara, Machel Ce­de­nio, Kashief King and Che Lara. The team was pre­sent­ed US$7,500 with each mem­ber re­ceiv­ing $1,250.

Richards shared great ad­vice, passed down dur­ing his suc­cess­ful ca­reer, men­tion­ing from TTOC’s im­me­di­ate past pres­i­dent Bri­an Lewis and his coach.

“When you are vic­to­ri­ous, live in the mo­ment, en­joy the mo­ment but even in the midst of dis­ap­point­ment or strug­gle al­so feel the pain, feel how it is to be sad but don’t live there too long al­ways have a good bal­ance, a mid­dle base where noth­ing doesn’t af­fect you for too long so you can restart and re­fo­cus,” said Richards.

“Go­ing for­ward, we just hope to keep grow­ing and mak­ing good progress and con­tin­ue get­ting bet­ter.”

The men’s 4x100m re­lay team of Jerod El­cock, Er­ic Har­ri­son Jr, Kion Ben­jamin, Kyle Greaux and Akani His­lop shared US$5,000 (US$1,000 each) for their sil­ver medal at Birm­ing­ham 2022.

Suc­cess­es are all part of a hec­tic pe­ri­od for Hen­der­son who has been in of­fice for just over four months but she is tak­ing it in stride.

“Thus far with two Games, a Sum­mer Olympic gold medal re­al­lo­ca­tion cer­e­mo­ny and oth­er ad­min­is­tra­tive mat­ters, it has been a very busy four months. The re­cent break-in of the of­fices has added the un­nec­es­sary chal­lenge of hav­ing to deal with mat­ters that could have been avoid­ed.

“How­ev­er, and thank­ful­ly, I can re­port that we have se­cured the serv­er al­low­ing it to be func­tion­al once again. While some of the na­tion­al team uni­forms have been re­cov­ered, an undis­closed amount was lost.

“We are ex­treme­ly grate­ful to all na­tion­al au­thor­i­ties and the Amal­ga­mat­ed se­cu­ri­ty firm for their swift ac­tion last week.”

She added that soon, the TTOC will be mov­ing to a new lo­ca­tion, as the oc­cur­rence has on­ly brought the need to ob­tain a per­ma­nent home and Olympic House as her team plans for next year’s Com­mon­wealth Youth Games (CYG).

“T&T through the TTC­GA has se­cured the CYG, Trin­ba­go2023. We look for­ward to a very ex­cit­ing Games and the sup­port of the peo­ple and the coun­try to en­sure that this twin is­land na­tion show­cas­es all that it has to of­fer to the Com­mon­wealth na­tions and by ex­ten­sion the world.”

Medal bonus­es

Cy­cling

Nicholas Paul: US$6,000 – Men’s keirin gold (US$3,000), Men’s sprint sil­ver (US$2,000), Men’s 1,000m time tri­al bronze (US$1,000)

Ath­let­ics

Jereem Richards: Men’s 200m gold (US$3,000)

Men’s 4x400m re­lay (Dwight St Hillaire, Asa Gue­vara, Machel Ce­de­nio, Jereem Richards, Kashief King, Che Lara) - Gold US$7,500 ($1,250 each)

Men’s 4x100m re­lay (Jerod El­cock, Er­ic Har­ri­son Jr, Kion Ben­jamin, Kyle Greaux, Akani His­lop) - Sil­ver US$5,000 (US$1,000 each)