Romany defends chef de mission Hypolite

The TT public has criticised Dr Hypolite for spending long hours on ESP N rather than with the national contingent at the Rio Games.

Romany, who was TT ’s chef de mission at the 2000 Sydney Games, defended Dr Hypolite saying he is not doing anything wrong by being on television doing live analytical work.

Romany explained the role of a chef de mission at the Olympics.

He said, “the chef de mission is really to manage the managers.

The real people who deal with performance are the team officials.

He would have a manager for each sport that is there that is the responsible for the performance of that sport.” Romany further explained, “he has been on TV on afternoons most of the time and on evenings. By that time all of the day’s activities would have been scheduled out and he would have been able to deliver all that he had to deliver in terms of management meetings.

Basically what you do is in the morning you hold a meeting with all the managers and you get their opinion of what they require for the day. You allocate duties to each manager.

But his (role) is more of an approval process rather than an involved management process.” Romany, who served as the TT Olympic Committee president from 2005-2013, said the TT public is criticising Dr Hypolite because they are trying to find a reason why the team is performing below par. Romany said if individuals observed the times the athletes were clocking before the Olympics they would realise that the athletes are performing on target.

Dr Hypolite was live on ESP N on Friday night when both the national men’s 4x100 and 4x400-metre teams were disqualified for lane infringements.

Many felt that Dr Hypolite should have been with the TT team to help file an appeal but Romany said Dr Hypolite could not get involved.

“He (Dr Hypolite) is not even allowed to intervene in athletics business,” said Romany.

“The athletics manager is the only one that has the jurisdiction to go in and lodge a protest.” The former TTO C president said that having Dr Hypolite on television is excellent. “It has been a tremendous boost for the Caribbean to have Ian Hypolite on television because he is one of the few people I know, and I come from a sport science background, that could really break down the whole movement and performance of an athlete,” Romany noted.