Waking up to Sport’s potential

And while I accept the importance of topics like the economy and the loss of the opportunity to construct the new BP offshore platform at La Brea, it was also refreshing to hear of his new vision for sports development, and the potential which lies in exploiting sports tourism.

The Prime Minister should be commended for suddenly embracing and adopting newly constructed centres for tennis, swimming, cycling and other sports—facilities he had opposed when he and his PNM were in Opposition.

The various sporting bodies must fan this ember of hope in order to develop the potential that Dr Rowley acknowledged. This actually was the most, if not the only, positive thing coming out of his television interview. I was very pleased to hear him share his interest in sports with us, and acknowledge the potential which these new facilities, along with older, existing facilities can bring for us. These facilities will encourage the development of our athletes and our teams for international competition and will also bring competitions in all of these sports to our country. This is called sports tourism, and it is a sector which countries have exploited to their advantage for years.

But why has it taken us so long? How long ago were some of these facilities in the promised, far less planning stages? We know, from since the Hasely Crawford gold medal in 1976, that our athletes must win medals before facilities to help them train and complete are promised, far less built.

Over the years, I have called for the development of sport as a means to building our athletes, our communities and our nation. The only times we have ever stood united and proud as a people were on the successes of our athletes and our national teams.

Years ago, when I called for the floodlighting of all our sports facilities, including rural playing fields, I was asked how the communities would afford the lighting. I argued that it was the duty of the State to fund such facilities, just as they fund street-lights along our roads and highways. Enlightenment finally came, and floodlighting now exists on most community playing fields and courts.

This is a community-building enterprise, and the development of competitive use of all these facilities will bring community pride, and unearth new athletes to bring more honour to our country.

But beyond the village playing fields and courts, the national centres for development of our undeniable latent talent will bring international teams to our country, for their training with our athletes and for international competitions to take place right here—just like long ago, when the international regimes did not require the sophisticated level of facilities we see today. Remember top international cyclists racing on a grass track at the Southern Games? Or the best international tennis stars playing at Tranquility Tennis Club back in the 1950s? Our Prime Minister has correctly recognised that these new facilities, which he originally opposed, have the potential to bring a wider range of international competition, and therefore sports tourism, to our country. However, for this potential to be achieved there must be open and obvious support for the sporting associations who seek to promote events and also to bring overseas teams here for training.

And it is here that I fear we shall fail, for we are totally absorbed with the bureaucracy of denial and delay for every citizen initiative in this land—and nowhere more so than in bringing events and personalities to Trinidad and Tobago. We have a committed propensity to complicate with old colonial bureaucracy every initiative which citizens and organisations seek to fulfill.

Remember back in 2004 when the then PNM government tried to prevent the visit here of Nelson Mandela? Remember just recently an annual Rugby Sevens Tournament, featuring teams from the Caribbean, Europe and North America, was moved from Tobago to Barbados? Tobago bureaucracy could not meet the simple requisites of the tournament, so Barbados welcomed the TT promoter, and that annual tournament has found a new home in Barbados.

Hundreds of players and supporters no longer visit our shores or spend their money here.

The social and bureaucratic changes needed within our governments to facilitate sports visitors and events are monumental.

Therefore, we who are administratively stuck in the 19th century may not be able to step up to the new efficiencies required to embrace and exploit this exciting potential.

I would like to be proven wrong on this, and see us institute an easy and welcoming regime for b r i n g i n g the sporting world to our shores.