Sev­en­ty-five (75) years is a long time to be in ex­is­tence and on Sun­day, the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) will start the cel­e­bra­tion of the mo­men­tous oc­ca­sion by par­tic­i­pat­ing on the fi­nal day of the T&T In­ter­na­tion­al Marathon (TTIM), as a means to raise funds for this coun­try's ath­letes.

Even with the on­go­ing coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic, TTOC pres­i­dent Bri­an Lewis and his team are de­ter­mined not to let the virus ru­in the com­mem­o­ra­tion of the mile­stone af­ter it forced the TTIM com­mit­tee, chaired by Di­ane Hen­der­son, to re­think the stag­ing of the event by host­ing a vir­tu­al marathon to pro­vide par­tic­i­pants with four dis­tances to chal­lenge them­selves. The event of­fers all run­ners a 5K, a half marathon of 13.1 miles, the full marathon (26.2 miles) and the Ul­tra Chal­lenge of 35 miles and they have from Jan­u­ary 1 - 24 to com­plete their event of choice.

"This is the sev­enth time we are par­tic­i­pat­ing in the T&T In­ter­na­tion­al Marathon. We will be do­ing the marathon walk on the tra­di­tion­al T&T marathon day on the last Sun­day in Jan­u­ary so we will be do­ing it on Jan­u­ary 24 which is this Sun­day," said Lewis, who al­so touched on the birth of the lo­cal or­ga­ni­za­tion.

Lewis point­ed that: "The TTOC was es­tab­lished in 1946 to par­tic­i­pate first­ly in the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean Games which was Bar­ran­quil­la, Colom­bia that year in 1946. The Games records would show, was held be­tween March 5 to March 25, 1946, so it's ob­vi­ous, even though we re­searched and tried to lo­cate the ex­act date of the es­tab­lish­ment of the TTOC which at that time was called a work­ing com­mit­tee the T&T Olympic As­so­ci­a­tion, we are cer­tain that it had to be be­tween Jan­u­ary and March 5, 1946."

He fur­ther stat­ed that: "So, it's our birth­day and we felt, in terms of the 75th birth­day, that it would form the theme for all events and all the ac­tiv­i­ties, the Olympic com­mit­tee would do in this year.

"We felt it was re­al­ly im­por­tant to con­tin­ue, notwith­stand­ing the chal­lenges of COVID-19, to do the marathon walk which shall be­come one of the re­al im­por­tant aware­ness and fund-rais­ing mo­ti­va­tion for the TeamT­TO #10golds24 Ath­lete Wel­fare and Prepa­ra­tion Fund."

Lewis, a for­mer rug­by play­er added: "The in­cred­i­ble un­cer­tain­ty sur­round­ing the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games now resched­uled to Ju­ly 23 to Au­gust 8 this year and the re­al­i­ty, notwith­stand­ing the un­pre­dictabil­i­ty and the un­cer­tain­ty now with the new vari­ant COVID-19 cre­at­ing sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges, pub­lic health etc, the re­al­i­ty that our ath­letes who have al­ready qual­i­fied and those who as­pire to qual­i­fy, have to con­tin­ue train­ing and prepar­ing and it is very im­por­tant for us to con­tin­ue to sup­port them."

The com­mit­tee has opt­ed to be­gin at the tra­di­tion­al start point in St Mary's Junc­tion, Freeport at 2 am and end 26.2 miles lat­er at Queens Park Sa­van­nah op­po­site White Hall in Port-of-Spain.

Lewis re­mains en­cour­aged by the sup­port of the pub­lic and in­di­vid­u­als who want to sup­port the TeamT­TO #10golds24 Ath­lete Wel­fare and Prepa­ra­tion Fund. Any­one can make a do­na­tion at the Sco­tia­bank ac­count 171188 or at Olympic House 121 Aber­crom­by Street in Port-of-Spain.

The spe­cial edi­tion marathon walk 2021 T-shirts will ac­knowl­edge the 75th an­niver­sary of the es­tab­lish­ment of the TTOC.

He said: "Last year, we had 100 peo­ple par­tic­i­pat­ing in the marathon in sup­port of the marathon walk and the Ath­lete Wel­fare and Prepa­ra­tion Fund but of course this year be­cause of COVID-19 re­stric­tions and pro­to­cols and guide­lines we will have to ac­cord with it so we will be putting the nec­es­sary pro­ce­dure in place to en­sure that our par­tic­i­pa­tion in the TTIM us­ing it as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to do the marathon walk fundrais­er."

Ac­cord­ing to Lewis: "We will be putting in place all the pro­ce­dures re­quired in terms of we have to wear our mask, main­tain a cer­tain dis­tance, the sup­port team will have gloves. We will make every ef­fort to make sure that the par­tic­i­pa­tion of Team TTO in the marathon and the marathon walk this year will be in ac­cord with the COVID-19 guide­lines with an em­pha­sis on safe­ty but it im­por­tant, our ath­letes need the sup­port, COVID-19 or no COVID-19.

"And con­tin­ue to fo­cus on the ath­letes and their prepa­ra­tion for Toyko 2020 which re­mains at this time sched­ule for Ju­ly 2021."