Latest update April 25th, 2024 12:59 AM
Sep 09, 2015 Sports
By Edison Jefford
The era of sending sports teams or representative individuals to international competition (s) for mere participation, simply “exposure” and/or to safeguard the annual financial subventions from international parent associations must come to an immediate end.
No longer should Guyana accept our otherwise talented athletes competing on the biggest stages, where creditable performances matter out of sheer respect for the event, under the consolation of doing so for “exposure”, which is usually an excuse for poor performances.
To watch a talented junior middle distance athlete, Andrea Foster, who has a personal best 800m time of 2:12.30 that was heavily wind-assisted at the windy National Track and Field Centre that is located Leonora, trailing distantly in her Heat at the World Championships in Beijing, was not only heartbreaking, but tragic.
It was heartbreaking because Foster clearly was not ready for that level of competition, and thus “exposing” the young talented athlete against some of the world’s best senior athletes could have enormous negative psychological effects on her career.
It was tragic because, perhaps, sport associations in Guyana, in this instance, The Athletic Association of Guyana (AAG), thrives on cronyism, where they feel compelled to “expose” athletes, who in their assessment, came from clubs that are subservient to the leadership of the association, and those who represent their particular interests at elections.
That level of sports management has left Guyana behind. That backward and retrograde idealism has been a curse in the administration of local sports time immemorial. Guyana cannot get results internationally if these issues are not addressed from a policy perspective.
Guyana has a rich nursery of naturally talented athletes, whom once nurtured and developed can bring this nation immense recognition and revenue at the right time. But it will require competent leaders with the necessary skill to harness the talent.
What has gone before is a process of hand-picked individuals, who merely serve in the interest of those who keep them in office, benefitting from trips. The 20 odd years that the Guyana Olympic Association President has been in that seat must come under scrutiny.
Guyana needs a new breed of leaders in sports to create and implement policies that will ensure associations are functional with competent personnel to holistically develop the respective sports disciplines at every level, beginning with the schools.
Currently, many associations are filled with ghost officials with the work often left squarely on the shoulders of a committed few, when there is an entire Executive, which unfortunately only exists in principle and not in practice.
These issues are important to the success of the National Sports Commission. If sport is to go in the direction that will ensure Guyana’s rightful place globally, policy must address dysfunctional associations and their cronyistic, ill-advised, poor decision-making as we saw with the AAG in sending Foster to the World Championships in Beijing.
Close examination of some associations will reveal a pattern of “exposure”, as they call it, of particular athletes from particular clubs and sections of society. Selection processes are skewed, misguided and marred because favouritism takes precedence over performance.
Logic, having not been invited to play any role in the process in the first place, simply remains obscure. So individuals are allowed to run amok; to put athletes of personal interest to them on the world’s biggest stages under the Golden Arrowhead.
Sports in Guyana and its culture are not insoluble. Legislation can fix some of the issues while others simply necessitate a changing of the guard; a change of some faces, who, unfortunately, only have stamped out passports and trips around the world to show for their prolonged stay at the helm or within some associations, but no tangible, traceable success.
For instance, how a man, who headed a defunct sport association, is Assistant Secretary General of the Olympic Association, and even received an award from that association as an outstanding Executive, is mysterious.
That’s a microcosm of a deeper problem within sport associations in Guyana. There is a solution, however, as mentioned earlier, an insistence for associations to put their houses in order with the requisite competent personnel, who are not phantoms, but functional.
In addition, associations must have established committees on Finance/Funding/Sponsorship, Discipline, Public Relations, Selection etc. so that structured programmes enhances a systemic approach and national vision, if one exists, for the development of sports.
Associations must have a Development Officer, whose work is to interface with the Ministry of Education, within which sports is now ironically housed, and schools so that each association has a year-round robust schools’ sports programme.
This is where the work of the Physical Education Department at the Ministry of Education ought to have been more dynamic in developing these relationships. The hand-in-glove approach, with all stakeholders supporting a correlated programme is the first step.
It is time to correct the anomaly of personalised sport associations, which embarrasses this nation internationally. It is time to allow scope for genuine sport teams and individuals with potential to succeed to represent Guyana, which will not succeed abroad if it is failing at home. A successful domestic sports programme will bring international success.
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