NOT ONE MEDAL. Nobody even came close!
But am I despondent? Am I drowning in a sea of despair? Am I going to bash the athletes who represented us in Rio?
Far from.
In fact, I want to complement them for a commendable job, and I’m not saying this out of sentiment or because I’m in denial. The truth is that experience is the very best teacher, and that’s what our youthful team gained in Brazil.
That priceless commodity called experience will be at the head table when the reviews are done and the road map for the future is drawn up for consideration.
If we didn’t have any representatives in Rio they would be raw and still uncertain about what it takes to be at the Olympics.
Only Ramon Gittens and skeet shooter Michael Maskell had previous Olympic experience.
Qualifying for the games is one thing, getting a grip of the true Olympic standard is another. You see how much higher you have to raise your own standards to even consider getting a medal.
You must have a burning desire and possess a hunger you never considered previously.
The first-timers would have seen that first hand. It’s not a Sunday school picnic or a leisurely day at the beach. It must have been easy to observe that aspect and to put it in your arsenal for next time.
What I’m trying to illustrate was best exemplified in athletes like Shaunae Miller whose desperate dive to get over the finish line, – even though she was falling – to win gold in the women’s 400 metres will not be easily forgotten, and the Belgian heptathlon winner who did five personal bests out of the seven events to shock the world.
The bar is raised that much higher and that’s why the Olympics is seen as the pinnacle of multi sport achievement. That’s part of the learning curve you could never know about if you didn’t go in the first place.
Obadele Thompson still owns our only Olympic medal (as a country), gained at the Sydney Games in 2000. Granted, he may not have been back to full fitness following injury two months before his first Olympics in 1996 in Atlanta but it was in Sydney that Oba came the closest in terms of execution than we had seen before. Why? He came armed with the knowledge and experience he had acquired from the previous Olympics.
In conversations of this nature, I always tend to use the great Usain Bolt as an example, perhaps the best one. Precocious as he was as a teenager waiting to take the world by storm, he was way below the standard to do anything significant at his first Olympics in Athens in 2004.
When he returned home, he and his associates plotted how to get the best out of such a talent in terms of bringing the all-round attributes that have made him a legend since that nondescript appearance in Athens.
Who’s stopping our fledgling, promising athletes from taking a similar path? I heard 400 metres hurdler, Tia-Adana Belle, pledging to do just that in a radio interview after the Games.
Others would have the same perspective having gone to Rio, and hopeful of going to Tokyo in Japan in four years.
The plot must begin immediately and with the athletes at the forefront of the movement, not Government, the corporate sector and other stakeholders, because it is the athletes who must want it bad enough in the first place to encourage others to support them.
I was pleasantly surprised when the promising Hannah Connell told me she will be ready for Tokyo in the 100 metres and the 100-metre hurdles. How’s that for confidence? How’s that for outlook?
How can I not give full backing to someone like that?
How can I not see a bright, shining light at the end of the tunnel despite not gaining a medal in Rio?
The experience gained by the athletes from Rio and the hopefulness of those who aspire to be Olympians boost my expectations even more for Tokyo.
Look out, world, 246 calling!
• Andi Thornhill is an experienced sports journalist and media consultant.