media_artricles :: 2016

Stop criticism please Ato

TTGG says Olympic champ unaware of facts

T&T Grand Games, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Regina John is calling on Olympic medallist Ato Boldon to stop tarnishing the image of the members of her organisation.

John and members of her committee have come in for severe criticism following their failure to stage the Games, leaving scores of disappointed athletes. Boldon, coach of a number of them, have described the committee as incompetent.

Noting that her organisation had suffered over $500,000 in losses, John was adamant that the event was not "cancelled" but rather it had to be stopped because of circumstances over which her organisation had no control.

While a lack of funds remained the main reason, she explained that they needed licenses to acquire public liability insurances for athletes but did not get them in time as they could not secure approval from Police and Fire Services.

She said documents were submitted to the office of the Commissioner of Police since October last year but approval was received on May 19, by which time, it was too late since she was already in the bank honouring her organisation's promise to refund athletes and others who spent their monies for the games.

A total of 120 athletes were scheduled to compete at the Games, scheduled for the Hasely Crawford Stadium, on May 21 and tickets were already purchased for 60 to be present. Among them were 100 metre sprinters—Jamaican Natasha Morrison who is ranked 11th in the world, T&T's Michelle Lee Ahye who is ranked ninth and Khalifa St Fort, who is trained by Boldon.

T&T Olympic gold medallist javelin thrower Keshorn Walcott was also among the cast, along with T&T's Cleopatra Borel.

John revealed that sprint king Usain Bolt was originally in the cast but pulled out due to injury. "We were pleased to get Bolt but when he pulled out we had go back to the drawing board," John said.

She was adamant that her committee meant well, saying they did all they could. "Boldon never once came to us and talk about what went wrong, but he is on the media everyday criticising us for everything when he is not even aware of the amount of work we did. Had he done that, he would have seen where we faltered," John explained.

She said Boldon's negative comments may have contributed to the cancellation of the after party event since people claimed they did not want to be associated with anything negative.

"We made a total loss, so we tried to see what little could have been recovered from the after party. People started thinking negative of us but we have our lives to go on with so I wish Boldon would stop tarnishing our reputation," John said. "People who bought tickets as well as vendors had to be paid back."

She said she would take the blame but people needed to know what transpired so that they would have a better idea, rather than listening to Boldon.

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