A national scandal - Who is to blame?

A national scandal – Who is to blame?

Apr 10, 2009 Sports

By Rawle Welch
Recently, so much has been highlighted about the lack of adequate support for athletes travelling to overseas engagements from the Government and Business Community, that it should be considered a national scandal.
How could we expect our athletes, already disadvantaged with the lack of top class facilities, to perform at their best when procuring funds to travel to these competitions is far more physically gruelling than training itself?
Blessed with an abundance of naturally talented athletes, this country is perhaps the only one in the region where sports persons repeatedly experience tremendous difficulties to acquire funds to represent their country.
Though some organisations must take responsibility for doing a poor job in organising fund raisers, many are of the opinion that enough is not being done to promote the importance of sport as part of the national framework.
Over the past week, a team of local athletes departed to attend the Junior Carifta Games in Castries, St. Lucia, while a table tennis contingent is expected to leave tomorrow for St. Kitts to participate in the Caribbean Junior & Cadet Championships and to listen and see what those athletes have to go through is indeed an embarrassment to this nation.
It resembles horror stories, more so when you take into consideration that Guyana usually sends very small contingents overseas and the fact of the matter is that this sordid situation occurs only among certain disciplines.
We had situations where members of a community had to pool together their scarce financial resources to donate to an athlete, while I personally witnessed one of our best medal prospects in a particular discipline (deliberately intent on naming the individual) standing at the gate of a popular businessman, perhaps to pick up some much needed sponsorship.
Another recent setback was the inability of two of our best sprinters (Rawle Greene and Alisha Fortune) to attend a regional Meet due to a lack of funding.
It must be noted that the only way they can become eligible to participate in the Caribbean Games in July is by making the qualifying mark at an event outside Guyana since we are incapable of recording times electronically.
Chosen as part of the provisional squad, the two national athletes were denied the opportunity to compete at the event because of the absence of funding even though it is well known that not many chances to qualify remain.
All it meant was that missing that event has further decreased their chances of qualification for the Games and no one should feel pleased about that.
We can go on and on, but these are just some examples of what usually occurs when adequate funding for national teams or athletes is not forthcoming.
Bear in mind, most of these individuals or their parents in the case of minors would have at some stage supported many business entities in one way or another in the past, but continues to find it difficult to garner their support.
Just for the records, I can recall a supermarket chain in New Zealand agreeing to sponsor the last World Netball Championship on the basis of the support they receive from women.
They said that due to the fact that their customers are predominantly women, they felt inclined to payback in the form of full sponsorship of the biggest tournament in the sport.
The lingering indifference towards certain disciplines has now created an aperture for athletes who normally would not have donned national colours, but did so due to their ability to attract sponsorship, thus contributing to Guyana’s poor showing at many regional competitions.
It is a crying shame that should incite a national conversation with immediate effect to rectify this unresponsiveness or at least ease the strain faced by so many in their quest to represent this country.

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