Bri­an Lewis

Re­cent­ly I read an ar­ti­cle about the rea­sons why the New Zealand 7s rug­by team was so suc­cess­ful un­der Gor­don Ti­et­jens. Ti­et­jens coached the New Zealand team for 20 years. His suc­cess is leg­endary. He ex­pects his play­ers to make ex­treme sac­ri­fices. He re­vealed that the play­ers have to un­der­go tests for strength, re­peat­ed speed and Beep/YoYo test­ing.

Ti­et­jens stat­ed that play­ers have to com­ply with con­di­tion­ers' stan­dards." If they don't, I don't pick them". He ex­pects his play­ers to look af­ter their nu­tri­tion, fit­ness lev­els and to man­age their lifestyles.

Suc­cess is manda­to­ry and se­lec­tion is ruth­less. He told the re­porter that suc­cess in sport, just as in busi­ness, de­pends on cul­ture.

His ap­proach and ethos is mir­rored in al­most every high per­for­mance sport pro­gramme across the de­vel­oped world.

Here in T&T, some peo­ple la­bel our sports­men and women pam­pered and men­tal­ly soft. This is an un­fair and judg­men­tal state­ment meant to cov­er over the de­fi­cien­cies of sport lead­ers, de­ci­sion mak­ers and the sport sys­tem.

There are two sides to every sto­ry. What are our ath­letes say­ing?

In­di­vid­ual and na­tion­al team sport ath­letes de­ter­mined to main­tain their fo­cus and at­ten­tion on be­com­ing a Con­ti­nen­tal, Olympic or World cham­pi­on feel they are be­ing im­ped­ed in their ef­forts by a dys­func­tion­al, bu­reau­crat­ic, in­ef­fi­cient, in­ef­fec­tive and un­sym­pa­thet­ic sport sys­tem.

That there are gaps along the path­way from ju­nior to de­vel­op­ment lev­el and the sys­tem is fail­ing those who have the tal­ent and po­ten­tial to be suc­cess­ful elite lev­el sports­men and sports­women.

To achieve ex­cel­lence they need ex­cel­lent coach­es, ex­cel­lent train­ing pro­grammes, ac­cess to fa­cil­i­ties and fi­nan­cial sup­port.

They per­ceive there is a lack of fi­nan­cial sup­port, lack of coach­ing ex­per­tise and sup­port, lack of train­ing/com­pe­ti­tion op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Sports­men and women per­ceive the sport sys­tem here as an ob­sta­cle rather than a suc­cess fac­tor.

It makes lit­tle sense hid­ing the ex­tent of the prob­lem.

Lack of sup­port is an ob­sta­cle that can neg­a­tive­ly im­pact per­for­mance ex­cel­lence.

In the mod­ern world of elite sport, an am­a­teur ath­lete or na­tion­al team is re­quired to train full time to the detri­ment of oth­er ar­eas of their lives.

Our sports­men and women need help now, not to­mor­row. We have to stop putting the band­wag­on be­fore the horse.

Sev­er­al con­clu­sions can be drawn from the re­spons­es of our ath­letes and na­tion­al teams.

We are sell­ing our sports­men and women and na­tion­al teams short. Our sport sys­tem is too far be­hind.

There is a grow­ing gulf be­tween our sports­men and women, elite lev­el ath­letes and na­tion­al teams and na­tion­al sport or­gan­i­sa­tions, na­tion­al gov­ern­ing bod­ies, Min­istry of Sport and the TTOC. The prob­lem needs to be ad­dressed now not lat­er. The land­scape is evolv­ing rapid­ly.

We are fast be­com­ing a rel­ic of a by­gone age.

The de­fi­cien­cy has been col­lec­tive. Elite and Olympic lev­el sport isn't neb­u­lous. It is per­for­mance dri­ven.

Suc­cess­ful ath­letes and na­tion­al teams in­spire a gen­er­a­tion of young peo­ple.

We need suc­cess­ful ath­letes and na­tion­al teams. Sport pro­vides al­most im­me­di­ate feed­back of what you have achieved or not achieved.

Peo­ple gen­er­al­ly have pas­sion­ate views for a rea­son. We have to cre­ate the sport en­vi­ron­ment that will in­spire our ath­letes and na­tion­al teams to strive, achieve and main­tain ex­cel­lence.

Our ath­letes feel that those in pow­er sit in their ivory tow­er and re­main de­tached from the feel­ings and con­cerns of sports­men and women. This is not on­ly frus­trat­ing but should be of con­cern to those en­trust­ed with the pow­er and au­thor­i­ty to make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence.

The time to start is now.

�2 Bri­an Lewis is the Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Olympic Com­mit­tee. The views ex­pressed are not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of the Na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee.