T&T's 68-mem­ber con­tin­gent for the Carif­ta Games pos­sess­es quite a few ath­letes with Olympic po­ten­tial so much so that Carif­ta sprints coach Kelvin Nan­coo be­lieves these ath­letes can work their way in­to the reck­on­ing in time for this year's Olympic Games in Paris, France while us­ing the East­er week­end track and field event as their spring­board.

Be­fore that how­ev­er, T&T will seek to bet­ter the 2023 Carif­ta Games per­for­mance when the team de­scends on Grena­da for the 51st edi­tion of the re­gion­al spec­ta­cle from March 29 to April 1 at the Ki­rani James Na­tion­al Sta­di­um, St Georges.

"I think this group will give us about 12 gold medals," said Nan­coo at Wednes­day's fi­nal train­ing ses­sion for this year's team at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo, Port-of-Spain.

In the Ba­hamas, T&T cap­tured 31 medals (nine gold, 10 sil­ver, and 12 bronze), plac­ing third on the medals ta­ble be­hind Ja­maica (78 medals) and Ba­hamas (46 medals).

"This squad is a very, very good squad. And I will tell you this, I don't think we will lose the Un­der-20 re­lay boys and girls. If they go the way, I think they can go, and I've seen them go along that road, I think we're go­ing to win many more medals than peo­ple an­tic­i­pate."

Since its in­cep­tion in 1972, the Carif­ta Games has gone on to be­come one of the world's lead­ing show­cas­es for ju­nior ath­letes com­pet­ing in two age groups, U-17 and U-20.

T&T has long been one of the re­gion's pow­er­hous­es at the Games and has seen dozens of fu­ture stars ris­ing to the oc­ca­sion at the three-day meet. Olympians such as Marc Burns and De­on Lendore (de­ceased) both of whom were in­duct­ed in­to the T&T Sports Hall of Fame last Sat­ur­day, Fana Ash­by, Dar­rel Brown, Josanne Lu­cas, Wan­da Hud­son, Ayan­na Hutchin­son, Je­hue Gor­don, Jereem Richards, Keshorn Wal­cott, Michelle-Lee Ahye, and Machel Ce­de­nio are but a few to cut their teeth at the event be­fore go­ing on to at­tain in­ter­na­tion­al ac­claim.

For this rea­son, Nan­coo, the head coach of the Cougars track and field club, be­lieves that ath­letes who show po­ten­tial at this year's Games in Grena­da must be giv­en ex­po­sure in Paris.

"When you are fin­ished with these Games, you can see the peo­ple who want to move for­ward but my on­ly prob­lem is if they have to move for­ward, they have to move for­ward with as­sis­tance. We need to as­sist our ath­letes and if these kids come out and re­al­ly per­form we have got to sup­port them and push them to be on that Olympic team.

"I think that some of these ath­letes who are run­ning U-20 are go­ing to go on­to the team to go to Paris. I be­lieve that they have a lot of im­prove­ment in them and once they are han­dled cor­rect­ly, they will move on," he said.

Go­ing one step fur­ther on his bold pre­dic­tion, Nan­coo, who has been T&T's Carif­ta Games re­lay coach since 2016 said, "I think the sis­ters Sanaa and Sole Fred­er­ick are key to this. They are right on track. I can see them mak­ing a bold ef­fort to get to the Olympics. Kyrell Thomas, if he trains the way he is sup­posed to train and eats the way he is sup­posed to eat, he will al­so end up on the Olympic team."

Sanaa was a triple-medal­list at the 2023 Carif­ta Games with gold in the U-20 girls 200m in 23.60 sec­onds, and sil­ver in the 4 x 100m re­lay team­ing up with her twin sis­ter Sole, Janae De Gannes and Reneisha An­drews. Sanaa al­so won bronze in the girls' 100m in 11.65 sec­onds.

Mean­while, 19-year-old Kyrell Thomas will make his Games de­but in the U-20 boys 400m and 4 x 400m re­lay.

Nan­coo al­so held high ex­pec­ta­tions for 2022 Carif­ta dou­ble sil­ver medal­list Dy­lan Woodruffe who won 4 x 100m and 4 x 400m sil­ver in Ja­maica. Woodruffe topped this year's T&T Carif­ta tri­als in the U-20 100m dash, clock­ing 10.49 sec­onds at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um on March 1.

Nan­coo, who has been ho­n­oured with the an­nu­al Mi­lo Games be­ing named in his ho­n­our, said "I can­not see Dy­lan Woodruffe run­ning 10.4 again. Dy­lan could run 10.1, 10.2 (sec­onds) and if he does run the 10.1, I think he should be giv­en a chance (at the Olympics) be­cause he is the fu­ture. He is 18 years old and is go­ing to be even stronger next year but there is no Olympics next year. He's got to make the time now."

Woodruffe, 18, is up to the U-20 ranks this time for the Games in Grena­da.

The T&T team is ex­pect­ed to leave T&T on Thurs­day.