Olympic city set to inspire

DOUGLAS CAMACHO, president of the Trinidad and Tobago Olympic Committee, recently spent a week in Athens, Greece, host of the 2004 Olympiad, from August 13-29. Out of a total of 202 National Olympic Committees, only one missed the bi-annual meeting of the associations of NOC, usually held in the year of the Games in the host country, so that “we see the facilities and get an update on progress.” Camacho, who is also president of Guardian Life of the Caribbean, has been a sports administrator for the past 32 years, when he became treasurer of the Trinidad and Tobago Hockey Board on leaving St Mary’s College. He played for the college and the junior and senior national hockey teams. Nearly 16 years ago, Camacho was elected treasurer of the TTOC.  He resigned as treasurer of the TTHF “to avoid any conflict of interest,” served two four-year terms and then became president of the TTOC.  The committe’s constitution does not allow him to stand for re-election at the end of his second consecutive four-year term in April 2005.

Ten thousand athletes and half of this amount of officials will descend on the Greeks come August. The contingent from this country is but a “dot in the proverbial ocean” of not more than 50 persons. “After Barcelona,” explains Camacho, “pre-qualification, usually handled in each region, became very stringent. The IOC capped the numbers allowed to participate in the Games, so that even if an athlete meets the qualifying standard, it is not always a guarantee and he/she may still have to earn the right through another qualifying process. In addition to the track and field athletes who are scheduled to represent us in Athens (our relay teams are currently ranked in the top 16 countries), along with swimming and possibly boxing and rifle shooting, Camacho is very impressed by  Taekwondo’s Chinedum Osuji. This could be one of our bigger contingents by Olympic standards. The TTOC’s philosophy under Camacho has been that local athletes who meet the minimum qualifying criteria, except in the case of disciplinary problems, will have their name put forward. 

“A lot of people are of the view that if an athlete does not have a clear chance at a medal that they should not be sent. This demonstrates the total absence of understanding on their part of what sport is all about,” stressed Camacho. “The only way the country could improve the quality of its sportsmen/women is for them to attend, be challenged and in that way be able to benchmark themselves against the very best so that they will know what is required to go that extra distance to be a medal contender. Without that opportunity, these young athletes are less likely to aspire as they will believe that unless in somebody’s subjective opinion they are a medal contender, the chance might never be afforded them.” He believes that the big gap after the Hasely Crawford era, before we started to produce athletes again, occurred because national sporting associations were not being efficiently managed, and exposed too few athletes to regular international competition because they could not meet the financial requirements to do so.

And that, says Camacho, “contributed in my mind to that period where Trinidad and Tobago seemed to be under-represented in so many sporting disciplines at so many Games.” “When I became treasurer, I remember saying that no athlete who qualifies in an event which the Olympic Committee has responsibility for will be denied the opportunity on account of funds.  And for 16 years, that has been so in spite of the inefficiencies and debt to the TTOC by many national associations; no athlete who has qualified has stayed home on account of finance. And I stress the word “athlete” and not officials, although I am a proponent of more officials accompanying a team than is necessary, but a lack of resources has always kept us back in that area, especially hockey, where the manager doubled as a coach, or as a delegate to meetings, and at the end of any given day on tour you are mentally and physically beat.”

What can our contingent expect in Athens? In spite of four days of intensive meetings, Camacho toured the proposed Olympic Village site which is “pretty much completed and is made up of  brand new middle-income type apartments, two stories up but with a basement area as well to store equipment and so on.  “Probably the best accommodation in the 30-something years I have been in sport. The athletes will have a really good village. It is going to be beautiful when all the flowers are grown and the accommodation is going to be first class. “Most of the physical sporting facilities are brand new.

What used to be an international airport has been converted into a multi-sporting complex, most of which had already been tested with international events by the time we toured, so in terms of the sporting facilities I think Athens is also ready.” The problem could arise in the transportation system as some major highways, which he is sure will alleviate some of the city’s problems in terms of traffic movement, have not been completed, but they are very confident it will be ready.

Visitor accommodation was a problem but they also seem to have found a solution with the presence of large cruise ships. Additionally, families who are not interested in the Games will be renting out their homes. Volunteerism, one of the conditions under which these Games are usually staged, is not a problem as just the history of going back to the birthplace of the Games has brought offers from not just Greeks but people from all over the world: “They have hundreds of thousands to choose from in terms of volunteers. Even in the short period we visited you could see that they have a sense of pride and history about these Games,” says Camacho.