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GARY GRIFFITH
ON BEHALF of the National Transformation Alliance (NTA), I congratulate and thank all the athletes and officials who represented our country at the recent Olympic Games. Their dedication and commitment made our country proud. However, we must also highlight the disappointing response from Prime Minister Rowley, who only praised Jereem Richards while disrespectfully failing to mention the other athletes who represented us at the Paris Olympics.
Beyond this slighting of the majority of our Olympic contingent, it is clear to me, as someone with experience in and with national sporting teams, that the current problems do not stem from a lack of quality in our athletes, but from a lack of support from our administration. And this is a problem that has existed for decades, as only a handful of us who have been in Cabinet, in a government, having first-hand knowledge of being involved in national sporting teams.
The country will recall that in 2012, under the People’s Partnership administration, we secured four medals at the Olympic Games, including a gold. This was the only Olympics during our time in office and three Olympics later, under this present Rowley-led administration, we managed just one bronze medal in 2016 and for the last two Olympics in 2020 and 2024 we had a virtual "guava season."
Proper facilities, training, equipment and technology that are standard worldwide are not being provided to our athletes locally. For comparison, American universities are better resourced than what is provided for our national athletes in our country, which is why successful nations at the Paris Olympics, including those in the Caribbean, utilise facilities in North America. It is unacceptable that universities in the US have better facilities for our athletes than we do locally.
We need the same type of technology, equipment, training and professional coaches to move our athletes from just qualifying to being finalists, and from being finalists to medallists.
As a demonstration of just how badly our athletes are being and have been treated, I recall athletes being forced to raise funds on their own to see a therapist for injuries mere weeks before international tournaments.
Yet when they succeed they are paraded all over the country and have their names attached to monuments such as planes and buildings. But this is all cosmetic since there is little follow-up support and, more importantly, it does not trigger anyone in charge to think that we could have this on a much larger scale if we simply properly resourced sportsmen and sportswomen
before they became famous.
This issue is not confined to the Olympic Games. For four years we have been unable to play hockey due to the Government’s failure to assist the TT Hockey Board in developing a field. This is exacerbated by the misuse of the artificial field built at the St James Barracks when I was commissioner of police, due to petty political reasons that has seen no national hockey league for four years running.
The national football team also struggles to secure funding to contract a successful international coach, highlighting the systemic issues in our sport administrations. We want the results of a Pep Guardiola but fail to provide the resources to hire world-class coaches.
And while it is bad for the national men’s team, it is even worse for under-15, under-17 and under-20 national football teams who are sometimes not even booked for flights to tournaments days before they are scheduled, psychologically affecting them, which negatively impacts their physical performance. And on their return, the youth teams are disbanded and only assembled again mere weeks before other tournaments, where they are competing against youth teams that do not disband but stay as a unit for years, and who go on to form their country’s national teams.
We need to stop treating sport as if it is a second-class ministry unworthy of top-tier focus. We have to prioritise assisting our athletes in the next administration. A visit to the Hasely Crawford Stadium reveals the substandard conditions our athletes have endured over the past four years. It is amazing that some athletes achieved what they did despite these hardships.
And it’s not just about track and field, it has to do with boxing, football, hockey, cycling, swimming, etc.
We must recognise and support our athletes before and during their preparation, not just celebrate them post-success, as is the norm.
Not just the Government but the private sector as well, since many only seem focused on offering expensive full-page advertisements in newspapers congratulating the successful athletes and teams, with their various company logos prominently displayed, yet refusing to virtually lift a finger to provide the financial support needed, as discussed, to prepare our sportsmen and sportswomen before international duties.
Our athletes need consistent support and proper facilities, training, equipment, technology, medical insurance, psychologists and nutritionists to compete at their optimal level.
We have moved from being gold medallists and hoping to be medallists, then from medallists we now hope to be finalists. Eventually, we’ll just be qualifiers if we don’t act with urgency. This is why it is clear to me that we need to provide the necessary support for our athletes to foster an environment where they can thrive and succeed on the global stage.
Gary Griffith is the political leader of the NTA
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