How a phone call dissolved a positive thought

Aug 21, 2008 Sports

By Rawle Welch
As me and my family sat in front of our television set anxiously awaiting the start of the women’s 100 metres final at this year’s Beijing Olympics last Sunday, I was quickly engulfed with a thought to write something positive about Aliann Pompey’s semi-final performance in the 400 metres.

This was despite her failure to make it to the final, but her gutsy effort as it appeared at first tempted me to scribble a few lines to highlight her performance before a phone call from a close friend successfully dissolved that thought.

It came as I waited for the euphoric feeling that had overcome my body dissipate after witnessing the three Jamaican sprinters sweep to an historic win in the final which left the usually mighty Americans off the podium.

My friend, without any prior discussion about my thoughts on Pompey’s performance said to me that “imagine da Jamaican girl just came out of high school and dun win an Olympic gold medal in a high profile event training right in Jamaica.”

Well, you could just imagine what that did to me in terms of putting a dent on any thoughts I had previously harboured about writing anything positive about Pompey’s performance.

Up until that phone call I seriously contemplated apologizing to her for the many negative articles that were written about our athletes, including Marian Burnett and others, inability to perform with credence against the best in the world.

That call quickly placed things in perspective and dashed any notion I had, instead it managed to whip up anger on the management of our sport institutions who seemed incapable of creating a plan to develop sports and ultimately our athletes.

Look how proud Jamaicans were as they celebrated the victories of Usain Bolt and Shelly-Ann Fraser after never before landing gold in those events.

Year after year, Olympics after Olympics, World Cup after World Cup and the list goes on, Guyana is never mentioned for more than a few seconds and never as serious contenders for any accolade.

It is nothing short of disgraceful when these high and frequent flying officials first of all almost outnumber the athletes and more sordid make little or no effort to secure expertise to develop sports here.

I sometimes wonder how embarrassed they must be when engaged in conversations where the subject matter is centred on the development of sports and the performances of our athletes. I presume they either avoid such discussions or cringe when faced with those questions.

Far too often, we fail to even present the right personnel for the occasion and this is so because of the politics that has entered into the territory of sports.

We all sat glued to our sets to witness the opening ceremony and for the umpteenth time felt embarrassed when Guyana appeared and was swiftly removed from focus and this might be a case of respect because we have one bronze medal to show for the many years of attending the Olympics.

Another reprehensible development is the fact that in the one sport where we earned our lone success (boxing), we did not have a single representative.

The time is now for all sports loving Guyanese with a serious vision for sports development to come forward and offer their advice on how to get rid of all those administrators who seemed hell-bent on taking sports and our athletes down a chasm with them.

This is the time and the momentum and space is with us, we should not falter like Asafa Powell did, but sprint to the finish line like Bolt and Fraser. We know who the culprits are.