PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC – The country’s top Olympic official has labelled the cancellation of the Caribbean Games a missed opportunity to show that the Caribbean can host multi-sport events.
Larry Romany, president of the Trinidad & Tobago’s Olympic Committee, was speaking in the wake of the abandonment of the inaugural Games which had been scheduled for mid-July.
Health officials here announced two weeks ago that the event would not go ahead as planned due to the spread of the Swine Flu virus.
“When the Swine Flu first came out in April, we looked upon it as a potential threat to the Games and the way we would see it as a threat, was not too much from a cancellation perspective but how it would affect the athletes that competed at the Games,” Romany said.
“This was an opportunity for the Caribbean to show that they had the capabilities intellectually, physically, logistically, to handle a multi-sport event.
“That has gone, so I personally believe that this has set us back. We’ve been cheated out of an opportunity and that’s just the way it is.”
The Caribbean Games, the first of its kind to be staged in the Caribbean, was expected to attract the region’s top-tier athletes to compete in several disciplines ranging from athletics to beach volleyball.
Romany said the Games could have gone a long way in transforming the Caribbean’s image.
“A lot of people don’t understand how Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean are viewed outside,” he lamented.
“In the international sporting fraternity, the Caribbean is viewed as a very fractured community and even politically, it is viewed as a fractured community.”
He stressed, however, that he understood the need to cancel the Games especially when individuals contracted the pandemic at or near three main venues for the Games, the UWI Sport and Physical Education Complex, Shaw Park in Tobago and Chaguanas.
“We had a situation where three of the major venues, including the venue for the village (UWI) had cases of Swine Flu,” he pointed out.
“We didn’t want to brand anybody as having come to a games and having Swine Flu because that is the real issue how it would have been translated by the media going outside.
“I think that the decision was actually very prudent and the TTOC for one, actually supports it.”
