The Trinidad and Tobago Commonwealth Youth Games contingent arrived safely in Apia, Samoa on Thursday 3rd September 2015. The team was greeted with a warm welcome by liaison Peni and was transported to the Latter Day Saints Church College to get acquainted with the athlete’s village. The team is happy to be in Samoa and have settled into the accommodation quite well.
 
Later that afternoon was the Chef de Mission’s meeting to discuss details of the Opening Ceremony and other important details. Samoa 2015 Chef, Jeannette Small, expressed that the difference in the culture was apparent from the modes of transport, houses, male clothing and the number of churches. In Samoan culture, family and church play an important role to the people of the small Pacific island.
 
The following morning (September 4th), training commenced for the athletes with a light one-hour session. After training, the volunteers gave the team a tour of Apia, which is the capital city of Samoa. Everyone shopped around for local items, with Jeron Thompson fully embracing the culture by purchasing one of the traditional male wear called the lava-lava.
 
On the day of the opening ceremony, the athletes had their last day of training before competition on the 7th September. In addition, the Technical meeting was held for Swimming confirming Jeron's participation in 50m & 100m breaststroke, 50m freestyle, 50m & 100m butterfly, 50m backstroke and Amira's participation in 50m & 100m Freestyle, 50m butterfly and 50m backstroke. Unique to the games is a combined federation 200m mixed medley where team TTO chose to pair with Jamaica.
 
After the days’ activities, everyone waited in anticipation for the Opening of the Games. 2,000 young cast members and teachers from 13 different Samoan schools featured in the Vth Commonwealth Youth Games Ceremonies, which took place on 5th September with an immersive and uniquely Pacific-style Opening event. The Opening Ceremony was split into two main parts; Traditional Samoa with a solemn and more serious re-telling of the Creation Mythology of Samoa with Tagaloalagi and the creation of the nine heavens through traditional dances and songs featuring an array of ma’uluulu, Siva Ti’a and siva afi; and New Contemporary Samoa, a fun setting of Samoa today. The stands were packed to capacity both with teams and spectators.

The team experienced a bit of culture shock as the Chef explained that it’s natural for Samoans to sit on the lawn or in their fale (Samoan word for all types of houses, from small to large). But despite that, Team TTO had the pleasure of sharing their seating area with the Samoan national team and meeting athletes from the other representing countries.

On the final day before competition, the athletes had a rest day in which the team attended church. After church was the Technical meeting for Athletics at the Apia Park Sports Complex where the manager received the numbers and schedule for Akanni Hislop and Akidah Briggs. 

Michelle Lee Ahye’s niggling injury shot back into the spotlight yesterday when she was forced to pull up halfway through the ISTAF Berlin — Internationales Stadionfest Berlin women’s 100m event in Germany.

Running out of lane four, Ahye produced an okay start among the eight other competing sprinters.

However, about 40m in, the 2014 Trinidad and Tobago sprint queen began to look in discomfort as she fell behind and was then forced to limp out the remaining distance to the finish line, placing ninth overall in a time of 17.81 seconds.

Winning gold was American Candyce McGrone in 11.11s while Ivorian sprinter, Marie-Josse Ta Lou (11.21s) grabbed silver and McGrone’s compatriot, Barbara Pierre (11.31s), settled for bronze.

Since July of last year, Ahye has been unable to maintain top form since sustaining a hamstring injury at a meet in Lucerne, Switzerland. The runner was forced to pull out of the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland and was unable to successfully defend her National women’s sprint title in June this year due to a slight injury even though she still competed.

Ahye has still produced several commendable showings over the past 12 months, with her most recent achievement of women’s 4x100m relay bronze at the World Championships.

Up to press time yesterday, it was still unclear if Ahye was seriously injured or just had a minor problem during the race.

Additionally, the only other TT athlete in IST AF action yesterday was National men’s 110m hurdles record holder, Mikel Thomas, who placed fifth overall in 13.72s.

Vying for honours out of lane four, Thomas had a good start but never seemed to capitalise as he tumbled over all ten hurdles.

Jamaican Andrew Riley (13.40s) captured the gold, followed by Bajan Shane Brathwaite (13.42s), Hungarian Balazs Baji (13.55s) and German Aleander John (13.68s) to complete the top four.

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Trinidad and Tobago’s fastest man on two wheels, Njisane Phillip, pedalled to this nation’s first and only medal of the 2015 Elite Pan American Cycling Championships yesterday as he captured Men’s Sprint silver when the curtains fell at the Parque Penalolen Velodrome in Santiago, Chile.

The 24-year old rode valiantly throughout the rounds but was unable to fuel his winning momentum in the gold medal ride-off against hemispheric rival, Colombian Fabian Puerta.

After advancing convincingly out of the opening stages of Sprint competition on Saturday, Phillip lined up along the 250m track for his semi-final meeting against another familiar face, Canadian Hugo Barrette.

Both Phillip and Barrette have a decorated sporting history with the latter most recently pipping the TT cyclist in a sprint final in Ontario, Canada, back in July.

However, Barrette was outdone by the 2012 Olympic Men’s Sprint fourth place rider this time around.

The Canadian sprinter seemed destined to repeat his recent victory after grabbing a hairline win in the opening semi-final ride. In the second ride however, Phillip took to the front with 375m remaining and despite a surge by Barrette in the final 50m, he was unable to trump Phillip, forcing a third and final ride for a shot at gold. Barrette started the third ride with an accelerated pace as he tried to fend off a late rush from Phillip.

The turn of speed from the Trinbagonian was just too much and Phillip was able to nose out Barrette on the line and advance to face Puerta in the championship ride.

In the final, however, the Colombian clinched a narrow win in the first ride to go one up. Phillip was unable to repeat his semi-final heroics in the second ride and had to settle for silver. His runner- up placing now provides the Siparia-bred cyclist with valuable UCI (International Cycling Union) points towards his World Cup and Olympic qualification.

Additionally, endurance rider Varun Maharajh placed seventh overall after completing six gruelling stages of the Men’s Omnium. Following the three opening stages of Omnium competition on Saturday, Maharajh stood in sixth place overall with three events to go. In yesterday’s 1km Time Trial, the TT cyclist placed seventh and then eighth in the Flying Lap to position himself into eighth place overall going into the final event, 40km Points Race.

Maharajh displayed good endurance to finish fourth in the Points Race, compiling an additional 30 points towards his total.

In the end however, his place would see him at seventh overall and finish just a few points short of a podium finish.

His performance here now sees him in line to become TT ’s first ever endurance cyclist at a World Cup.

But, confirmation of his presence at the coming World Cups will only be made when the UCI releases its updated point standings on September 15.

Earlier in the day, Aziza Browne and Jodi Goodridge tried valiantly but couldn’t advance to the semi-final of the Keirin with both finishing fourth in their respective repechage heats.

After press time last night, Maharajh and youngster Akil Campbell were scheduled to become the first national cyclists to compete in the Madison race at an international meet.

The 17-member TT contingent is expected to depart the South American continent today and arrive in Trinidad tomorrow.

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Louise Martin's election here as the President of the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) capped a productive couple of weeks for British sport administrators, following, as it did, Sebastian Coe beating Sergey Bubka to become head of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) in Beijing last month.

In fact, British officials have not held this many positions of influence for probably more than 50 years. Besides Martin and Coe, Sir Craig Reedie is President of the World Anti-Doping Agency, as well as being vice-president of the International Olympic Committee, and Sir Philip Craven heads the International Paralympic Committee.

Brian Cookson and Kate Caithness, meanwhile, are Presidents of the International Cycling Union and World Curling Federation respectively, meaning Britons head three International Federations on the Olympic programme.

Britain's reputation for producing able sports administrators has been largely restored by the success of the last two major events staged in the country. In fact, both Coe and Martin each used their close involvement in the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics and the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow as the launchpads for their respective campaigns, although neither admitted they were planning to stand at the time, of course.

The extensive travelling to meet and greet foreign officials during the build-up to each Games proved pivotal in their eventual success. Martin, the vice-chair of Glasgow 2014, visited 64 Commonwealth countries and territories as the Queen's Baton Relay toured the globe last year, often spending less than 24 hours in each country, although she apparently never missed the opportunity to teach her international friends the dashing white sergeant. Coe, meanwhile, undertook another world tour in the build-up to the final IAAF vote, estimating he travelled 700,000 kilometres.

Of the two elections, Martin's victory was arguably the more unexpected. It is notoriously difficult to unseat a sitting President of an organisation, especially when you are a woman in a man's world.

Prince Imran's fate was probably sealed, we have now come to realise, when at the CGF General Assembly in Glasgow in 2013 he backed a plan to relocate the organisation's headquarters from London to Kuala Lumpur in his home country Malaysia. The crassness of how it was handled shocked the CGF members, who were appalled to hear on the morning of the Assembly that redundancy notices had already been issued to the staff members working in London before they had even had the opportunity to discuss and vote on the proposal.

The plan was defeated as opposition, led by African and Caribbean countries, rallied strongly against the idea. The Commonwealth Games may be dismissed by its critics as a sporting event that celebrates British imperialism but those countries who are part of the CGF are proud of being part of a Movement that has its roots in London and its links with the British monarchy. They did not want those links cut. It was a terrible error of judgement by Prince Imran.

Prince Imran pointed out during his presentation here that the idea to move the headquarters from London was not his alone and had been taken by the CGF Executive Board - of which Martin was a member as the honorary secretary - following a study carried out in 2012 by professional services firm KPMG. They had identified Kuala Lumpur as the ideal place to relocate too after considering a number of factors, including tax efficiency and the costs of overheads. But his refusal to acknowledge that, as President, he should take ultimate responsibility for what happened continued to anger delegates here.

This, coupled with the refusal by Prince Imran,  the second son of the late Tuanku Jaafar, the former monarch of Negeri Sembilan, one of the 13 states of Malaysia, to lobby during the campaign reinforced the belief among many of the Commonwealth Games Associations (CGA) that he was aloof and out of touch with their needs.

It was certainly an eye-opener, having come here from the IAAF election where Member Federations - ranging from the smallest, such as Nauru, to the biggest, like Russia - were lobbied hard and relentlessly right up to the last minute by teams representing Coe and Bubka. In every election, those with a vote like to be made to feel like they are valued, something Prince Imran failed to do spectacularly here. Starting your presentation by apologising for not having shaken everyone's hand is not going to make anyone feel special.

Prince Imran's dislike of "politicking", as he called it, left an open field for Martin, a former swimmer who reached the finals of both the 100 and 200 metres backstroke at the 1962 Commonwealth Games in Perth. to exploit. Her manifesto, "Unlocking Our Potential", was produced with the help of Vero Communications, the strategic communications agency set-up by former London 2012 head of communications Mike Lee, who had worked so hard on the successful campaigns of Coe and Cookson. She also received assistance from Government agency UK Sport, who are committed to helping Britons get elected into positions of power.

Martin's familiarity with the CGA members and the ease and warmth with which she moved among them, having been secretary of the CGF since 1999, enabled the Scotswoman to hoover up votes like a human Dyson. Even up to a few minutes before the delegates came to cast their votes, it was claimed the election was too close to call. In the end, though, Martin won so easily that one CGA was told the CGF would not be publishing how many votes each candidate received for fear of "humiliating" Prince Imran.

Prince Imran is a good man and was incredibly gracious in his defeat afterwards. It  was painful to watch him, though, having to continue to chair the rest of the Assembly with Martin sat to his left. In the end, he really appeared to have little to offer the CGF apart from a half-hearted plea to be allowed to continue so he could oversee the implementation of "Transformation 2022", the Commonwealth Games' version of Agenda 2020, the roadmap adopted by the International Olympic Committee.

Just like Coe did during the IAAF election, Martin is promising to help provide financial support for the voters who backed her and increase revenues, including recruiting blue-chip companies to sponsor the CGF. It is easy to make these promises but now both must deliver. Martin's task will surely be the harder. At least Coe has a product everyone understands - even if it is one slightly tarnished at the moment.

Martin, however, is trying to sell something few people outside the club understand, even if the statistics are staggering. The Commonwealth covers more than 11,566,870 square miles, almost a quarter of the world land area, spans all the continents and has an estimated population of 2.328 billion, nearly a third of the world population.

On the face of it, you would have thought companies would be queuing up to be associated with an event that reaches so much of the world. The truth is, to most people, the Commonwealth Games' association with colonialism makes it seem an outdated idea. Martin's target will be to make it appear relevant in a changing world, including appealing to cities to host the event so the CGF does not end up with anther situation like it did here when Durban was the only bidder for the 2022 Commonwealth Games.

If she can get sponsors and cities dancing to her tune with as much enthusiasm as she got potential voters when she taught them the dashing white sergeant, then she will go down in the history books for being more than the first female President of the CGF.

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