Submitted by Wayne Cadogan
Over the years I have heard many stories about athletes who had athletic scholarships and had returned to live on the island, and would not give back by getting involved. Personally, I have seen it first hand for myself and can sympathize with many of the athletes for their actions of taking a back seat attitude. I certainly cannot blame the majority of them for not getting involved, because when they offer their services and if it does not fit into the BAAA agenda which happens to be a close-knit organization, they are not welcomed with open arms and similarly the majority of the other sporting organizations. A few days after the recently concluded 2015 CARIFTA Games, I happen to run into one of the local high school coaches on the streets and was making a point to him, that although it was a very admirable achievement for Mary Fraser to have won the three gold medals, that it was too much of a work load for her young body to take at that tender age over a three day period. The body needs to go through a recovery process after each race and according to the distance, would need a day recovery for every mile raced.
Although I applaud her achievements, I do not agree with the manner in which the young lady is being handled because her body is not developed for such vigorous training and participate in so many races in as many days just to win a medal. The distance for high school girls in the United States running cross country is 4K and for the boys 5K. If she is not handled properly she will suffer the same fate of burnout like those before her, such as Rudder, Comissiong, Alleyne, Greaves and more recently Burke who was very dominant in primary school and has yet to feature in high school athletics. These were all very young promising youthful athletes who seemed to have a bright future ahead of them but did not make it because they were all handled very badly in my opinion. Some of the athletes mentioned above were burned out because of the heavy load of training, races and type of running for their ages. Distance runners do not reach their peak until their 30’s. Janelle Williams was a promising runner at her tender age, very talented, but again, the load for her age was too great and burned her out.
During that conversation with the coach, I lamented the fact of Sada Williams having to miss the CARIFTA games through an injury that she picked up a week before the games. I told him that she is a world class ranked Junior 400 meters runner and should be specializing in her pet event, which is the 400 meters. I said to him, that the injury should never have occurred, and that the reason for the injury was because she ran too many events at the Secondary Interschool Sports and that the coaches did not look at the bigger picture, which were the CARITA Games and the World Juniors and other international world class meets. Her school did not even have the faintest chance of winning the inter school girls championship and therefore should not have been competing in all those evens to risk injury which happened. Well, his response was very aggressive, stating that it was not from running all the events, because she jogged all her races and was not pressured in any of the events. I was there and watched all the races and what I saw was very competitive in every event, I did not see any athletes jogging in any of the heats, what I saw were athletes running flat out to qualify by placing in the first two and the third fastest time going through to the finals. As a result, she misses out on the CARIFTA Games, which would have been a warm up for the World Junior Championships and any other international meet. Now instead of peaking for the World Championships, valuable weeks of training was lost and after recovery, will now have to resume her training program instead of tapering down.
The response that I received from the coach was very shocking, I would never have expected from him as he has never seen me in any athletic forum or have we ever had any conversations or discussions on athletics at anytime. Ranting and raving, I was told that “you think you are an expert on everything”! It is comments like this that stop our country from going forward in sports, and as usual, that is why the other so call smaller islands have gone ahead of us. I now really understand why other athletes keep their distance and do not get involved. I too will be joining the ranks with the others and will continue observe from the side line. Every so-called coach is looking for glory and that is why they do not want any input of any sort regarding their charges, in the end, it is the athlete and country that loses out. While I am on the subject of athletes not going forward, I was very disappointed with the statement made by the Minister of sports on the return of the athletes from the games in St. Kitts at the airport, regarding a new stadium. What does a stadium have to do with athletes improving, absolutely nothing other than to make the spectators comfortable? What Barbados needs is a proper sports program, which is lacking in all sports. You have better facilities now than the sixties and athletes today are running slower. A school boy’s football or cricket team from the sixties would beat any current Barbados team, which has better gear, equipment and playing conditions. Yes we need proper facilities but that does not make or sports any better than what it is, it is a proper sports program and more unity among the various coaches, especially in athletics.
There are approximately 12 track clubs in Barbados and yet at Nationals in some cases you have to scratch an event, because you cannot find an athlete to compete. In most cases, the majority of races are straight finals with less than eight athletes. Is a stadium going to improve the quality of athletics, well I do not think so. Yes, the pig pen that we have for a National Stadium is a disgrace and is in dire need of renovations, and closing it down every two years for repairs doesn’t make any sense. Yes Barbados does need a new ultra modern stadium, but I am not so sure that it is going to improve the standard of sports, but improvement of your sports programs will improve your sports!
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