I have been?hearing about strategic plans to develop sports in Barbados since Adam was a lad.
Adam has grown to be an adult and I’m still hearing about this plan that aims to put our global stamp on international sport.
The most recent proclamations came at a NATION Talkback and there were similar designs over the weekend from Cammie Burke, a director of the Barbados Olympic Association. There was nothing new being said.
Fundamentally, there is nothing wrong with planning but the execution of such plans has clearly been the problem.
It becomes nothing more than slogans and lip service if a road map has been put in place and then it seems the path is not being followed.
Even if I concede that in life things don’t always go as projected for various reasons, we should still be able to identify some kind of achievement no matter how small.
For argument sake, let’s agree that 2000 was a defining moment for local sport, not just athletics, after Obadele Thompson won Olympic bronze in the 100 metres.
People in authority spoke with passion about what was to be done to go to the next level.
If I’m not mistaken that was the achievement that inspired a former Prime Minister to urge the citizenry to go for the gold.
So even within that context, Thompson’s medal became something like a call to rally the troops to aim to maximize their abilities and not to settle for anything less than the best in pursuit of an improved status as a developing country.
So similar promises to what I’m hearing now were made then but the evidence would show they were either broken or not enacted in the first place.
My evidence comes from the athletes who have confided in people like myself or even in public forums that agencies responsible for assisting in their development haven’t kept their word.
That broken promise becomes a psychological burden and demotivates athletes at a rate of the speed of light. Hence, half of the battle has been lost even before a plot of winning has been conceptualized.
Isn’t it any wonder then that our next significant accolade in international sports came nine years after Sydney with Ryan Brathwaite conquering the world in the 110 metre hurdles in Berlin?
There again, can it be proven conclusively that there was anything systematic put in place by the powers that be that contributed to Brathwaite’s triumph?
What transpired then was that he had a bandwagon loaded with many that perhaps never took notice of his raw talent and never contributed to his development before he was a world champion.
The moral in this is that we have to identify precocious talent from early and work with them strategically in all the areas that should enable them to progress.
I will concede that Brathwaite may have been an exception to this rule because he only found his niche at his secondary alma mater Lester Vaughan and there are others who will be late bloomers but generally we can identify those sportsmen and women with special talent from primary education.
This is where the profiling of the potential elite athlete must begin and it is not too early to set standards because they must possess a particular mindset to be competitive and to succeed at the highest level.
The greatest obstacle to this lies in the fact that we often have a knee jerk reaction to sports rather than a proactive approach.
It could be that we are back with this perennial discussion after the performance of the team at the World Athletics Championships. More of the afterthoughts syndrome that continues to cause our sporting stagnation.
I found it amazing that there’s a long-term proposition by the BOA to develop medal prospects for the 2020 Olympics, so what do we truly have in mind for 2016 in Brazil? More clarity is needed in this respect.
In the 2020 plan I see that boxing has not been mentioned as a sport that BOA will pay special interest to when pugilists have served Barbados extremely well at major games through the years. It ought to be included on merit.
Further, I will state again that former world-rated boxer Tyrone Downes and others like Edward “Yogi Bear” Neblett and Christopher “Shaka” Henry must become an official part of the national programme.
In essence, I don’t believe we need rocket scientists to develop a strategic plan for sport. We need people at the helm to spend more time around the respective disciplines to see firsthand some of the real challenges confronting our athletes and taking their opinions into account on how to resolve them.
• Andi Thornhill is an experienced, award-winning freelance sports journalist.
