EDITORIAL: Alternative perspectives

For all its hype, the quadrennial Commonwealth Games, formerly the British Empire Games, runs a distant third in terms of athletics prestige behind the World Championships and the Summer Olympics. Restricted exclusively to competitors from the Commonwealth, of necessity there are no participants from the powerhouses of the European bloc, the USA, Cuba or Latin America. Such an occasion thus permits those competitors from the relative minnows of the athletics world, such as the countries in the region, to gain an opportunity to stand on the podium as medal winners and, on the rare occasion even, to have their respective national anthems played as gold medalists.

This year’s iteration of the Games on the Gold Coast of Australia followed this script to the letter and competitors from St. Lucia, Bermuda, Grenada, Guyana and even the British Virgin Islands, to name a few, were able to stand on the podium for medal presentations after their respective events, joining the regional powerhouses Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago, whose national anthems were themselves heard on more occasions than a few.

A seemingly hapless Barbados was regrettably unable to secure a single medal of any material from its competitors in any event and, even in those where we managed to secure a place in the finals, the performances of our participants were in the main mediocre and underwhelming.

Naturally, this relatively poor showing has caused some embarrassment to local fans and others. One local commentator, himself a former Olympian and successful junior track coach, Mr Seibert Straughn, has questioned the efficacy of the preparation of the team given the comparatively weak showing and underperformance. In response, a senior official of local Amateur Athletic Association, vice-President, Mr Noel Lynch, took umbrage at this assessment, attributing what he terms as the squad doing “well under the circumstances” to the staging of the Games this early in the American outdoor season and the unavailability of a number of other leading athletes.

We do not consider that it is at all satisfactory to explain away our comparatively modest performance in Australia on the timing of the event relative to US outdoor season. It is not as if our athletes set the track alight there either. And, as Mr Straughn averred, “ We had a team, all of whom knew when the Games were scheduled. That is not an excuse when you are performing at the highest level…”

For our part, would be more inclined to accept these excuses had most of the medals been taken by those athletes from the antipodes. But the fact that we were out-medaled by some of our own neighbours who are identically situated as we are is what causes the greatest regret. We should not be content to leave each global event empty-handed while our fellow islanders take away gold, silver and even bronze medals for their efforts.

And that was in the athletic events alone. The others served only to reflect the vast gap between our highest standard and those of others.