Spectacle at Athens

LET US be realistic, the chances of any one of our 23-member contingent bringing home a gold medal from the Athens Olympics which opened yesterday are remote, if not non-existent. The only TT athlete who seems to have the potential for achieving this supreme objective is our hammer thrower Cleopatra Borel who defeated the defending Olympic champion at a meeting in Hungary recently. Hopefully, though, we may be able to snatch a few other medals in such areas as the sprints, swimming, air pistol shooting and the 4x100 relay. The simple fact is that our team to the Olympics is not a very impressive one, particularly in the field of athletics where our two hopefuls are Ato Boldon who may now be considered a veteran sprinter in the autumn of his career and Darrel Brown whose hamstring injury has kept him out of top class competition for some time.

This, of course, raises again the old question of why our country is unable to produce on a consistent basis athletes of world-class quality, which again produces the same old answer of our inability to build a national infrastructure by which such athletes can be nurtured and trained and inspired to achieve. But, on the other hand, that failure may also be the result of a mindset and an approach to life that is becoming pervasive among our young people; a desire to obtain without achieving, an attitude that dismisses the kind of personal discipline and dedicated striving required to win gold medals or attain success in any worthwhile endeavour. But at this time, let us not distress ourselves with this kind of pessimism.

Instead, let us, as ardent sporting fans, look forward to enjoying the spectacle of these magnificent games over the next two weeks. The Olympics at Athens, in fact, hold special significance as the quadrennial games are being hosted by the historic Greek city in which they were born some 2,780 years ago.  This is what Pindar, the Greek lyric poet of the 5th century bc, had to say about them: “As in the daytime there is no star in the sky warmer and brighter than the sun, likewise there is no competition greater than the Olympic Games.” Pindar would be overjoyed if he knew the unique and  marvellous contribution the Games have since made to unifying the peoples of the world, to eliciting in amicable rivalry what is best and noblest in the human condition and in creating memories and friendships across national boundaries that last for a lifetime.

So that while we support the efforts of our own participants, expecting them to give of their best regardless of the competition, we can also delight in watching the various contests and the performances of those who win immortality for themselves in the wonderful world of sport. For us, of course, athletics will hold the greatest fascination, particularly the glamour event, the 100 metre sprint, which appears to be a genuinely open affair this time around, with no obvious or clear cut favourite. World champion Tim Collins seems to be out of form, not having won an international race in the run-up period.

Maurice Greene, ranked No 1, was beaten twice last week by the rising young Jamaican Asafa Powell who may well be the dark horse in the race. Hope, they say, springs eternal in the human breast and there are Trinis, we feel sure, who may be dreaming that either Ato or Darrel can pull off a golden miracle in this event. Nothing would please us more, but we wouldn’t bet on it. But, in the final analysis, there is more to the Olympics than just winning medals. The Games, in which all the countries of the world, 202 of them, enthusiastically take part have acquired a reputation for excellence all their own, a showpiece for the ideals of culture, peace, harmony, sportsmanship, fairplay and, of course, courage. Let us enjoy the spectacle at Athens, whether we win a medal or not.