Trinidad and To­ba­go ath­letes com­pet­ing at this year’s Olympic Games which opens in Paris, France on Ju­ly 26, will do so sport­ing Puma spon­sored run­ning ap­par­el. The full range of cloth­ing to be worn was re­vealed at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Olympic Com­mit­tee’s (TTO) of­fice on Wood­ford Street, Port-of-Spain on Fri­day.

Two of the ath­letes who are head­ing to Paris, Michelle-Lee Ahye and Eli­jah Joseph, were among the ath­letes on hand to mod­el the na­tion­al gears.

Joseph was elat­ed at get­ting a feel of what he will be wear­ing in the French cap­i­tal. “It feels great. This is my first na­tion­al team for Trinidad and To­ba­go. I re­al­ly ap­pre­ci­ate this op­por­tu­ni­ty T&T on the world stage and I am thank­ful for that.”

He was named in the T&T’s men’s 4x400m re­lay team is com­pet­ing for the coun­try for the first time ever.

Ahye is head­ing for her fourth Olympic Games and will con­test the women’s 100 me­tres and 4x100 me­tres re­lay events.

TTOC Pres­i­dent Di­anne Hen­der­son says the un­veil­ing of the out­fits should boost the con­fi­dence of the na­tion­al com­peti­tors. “We have al­ways want­ed to some­thing show­case the uni­form. It brings alot of pride to the ath­letes and they feel re­al­ly spe­cial. I think it went well.”

Hen­der­son paid trib­ute the role Puma has played in cloth­ing na­tion­al con­tin­gents. “We are al­ways so grate­ful for Puma for this spon­sor­ship and part­ner­ship. It is al­ways im­por­tant to have that sup­port every year con­tin­u­ous­ly for all our mul­ti-sport games.” She added that the TTOC had  an in­put in the fi­nal look of the out­fits. “There are usu­al­ly set de­signs and we just con­firms which ones (we like) and they (Puma) sur­pris­es us with a few things.”

The 17 ath­lete and 16 of­fi­cial Olympic del­e­ga­tion will head off to a pre-Olympic train­ing camp from next Tues­day, ten days be­fore the Open­ing cer­e­mo­ny. Ac­cord­ing to Hen­der­son the T&T team will be­gin ar­riv­ing in Paris two days be­fore the start of the Games. “Ath­letes leave for the train­ing camp from Ju­ly 16. Each sport (Cy­cling, Track and Field and Swim­ming) at dif­fer­ent are­nas and all will meet back at the Games Vil­lage be­tween Ju­ly 24 and 26.”