Submitted by Wayne Cadogan
Once again, we are in another Olympic year and it is the same old story, Olympic after Olympic of promises and more promises regarding our sports. The Olympics will come to an end and Barbados results will be the same as in previous years and we will hear the same old story that is preached after each Olympics games.
There will be no beneficial results for the country other than possible personal best times for the individual athlete, but no hardware to boast of. The only benefactors from the Olympics will be the usual large and inflated officials that always accompanying the team to all games.
The large number of officials that accompanied the four athletes to the Olympics this year is nothing new or unusual. This is a precedent that has been going on from the 1960’s, when a national team of three athletes went to Puerto Rico to compete and thirteen officials accompanied the team. There was chaos among the athletes with the time scheduling due to the language barrier and the so-called officials were nowhere around to sort matters out. It was alleged that they went on a shopping spree.
The inclusion of Tristan Evelyn is a classic case of padding the team in order to carry more officials, because she did not meet the qualifying times for the 100M. The Barbados Olympic Association cannot even justify her presence in the team for the experience or for competition exposure, as she has long past her best and there is no way that she will get past the first round of the 100 meters.
Athletics is about times and distances. It is unfortunate that most Barbadians do not see times and distances as the measuring stick for an athlete’s success. I have always maintained and will continue to say that if an athlete cannot win an event at level four, that it is impossible to win at level one, being it’s the Olympics.
Unfortunately, our best athlete Sada Williams’ hope of winning a medal at the Olympics will be difficult because given her times and inconsistency, I cannot see her medaling ahead of any of the ten athletes whose times are far superior to hers. But it is on the day of performance that counts.
It breaks my heart as a former athlete to see that the islands that Barbadians refer to as small islands, have gone pass us by leaps and bounds in all sports, especially in athletics. Grenada is a classic case, they have three Olympic medals, one gold, one silver and one bronze and there’s the possibility of getting another medal at this year’s Olympics, plus five World medals yet we are here in Barbados still jumping up in the air over one Olympic medal.
There are two problems facing Barbados sports, one is that Barbadians do not have that passion for sports like Jamaica and Trinidad and some of the other territories, which are rich in history going back from the 1940’s and have a vibrant Sports Program, while Barbados does not have one, at least not a proper sports program. Our sports have been going backwards since the 1980’s, while all the other islands have been going forward. The main problem is that sports is seen as recreational and not taken as seriously as other nations look beyond the amateur level as a possible money earner and career.
A stadium is not the answer to Barbados going forward, we have a thousand and one so-called coaches and yet we do not have the results to show. As far as I am concerned, Barbados has only two competent coaches, who get results and have been doing so for years. What Barbados needs is a National Sports Complex and I had been advocating for years for it to be built across the street from the present stadium where the largest Botanical Gardens in the region is now located.
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