media_artricles :: 2016

Henderson supportive of Dr Hypolite dual-role

MORE support has been given to Trinidad and Tobago's chef de mission Dr Ian Hypolite after his involvement with the team at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, as another former chef de mission Diane Henderson is defending him.

Dr Hypolite has been under fire for spending a lot of time working on EPSN as an analyst during the Olympics while fulfilling his duties as chef de mission of the TT Olympic team. Henderson, who held the role as chef de mission for the TT team at the Pan American Games last year, explained that the managers on the TT squad are responsible for the athletes first.

The national men's 4x100m and men's 4x400m teams were both disqualified for lane infringements during the Olympics.

When the TT teams were disqualified Dr Hypolite was on ESP N and many felt he should have been with the team to file a protest. Henderson explained that is not part of Dr Hypolite's job portfolio.

Henderson said, "I think some people got one thing wrong even in the sense of protests and claims. There are managers for specific reasons. Therefore Mr George Commisiong (TT Olympics athletics manager) would have been the first person to deal with anything and Dr Hypolite would oversee as the chef. He (Hypolite) would step in if there is a situation that goes beyond but each manager has a role and they are the first technical person to address any immediate concern because they are directly dealing with the athlete." Henderson added, "we realise the general public are not privy to the way how these things work.

So it appears that he (Dr Hypolite) is not there for them (the athletes)." Team TT got one medal at the Olympics with men's javelin athlete Keshorn Walcott earning bronze and many people in TT were disappointed with the overall performance of the team.

Henderson believes the national public were harsh on the athletes.

"I think it is harsh. I am an athlete myself. I really think that people just go over the top these days. In other words they go onto Facebook and they are just responding to anything but they are not looking for grounded reasoning, they are not looking for the facts and they are just responding off the top of their head. Try to understand a little bit more about the process of athletes." Henderson made a call for parents in TT to enroll their children in sport to increase the talent pool so the country can produce more national athletes.

"I want every parent to put their child into sport because when they do that they begin to understand (what athletes endure) and we get more athletes.

We have a short fall of athletes to pull from that is the first problem we have. We have to build our talent base so we have more athletes to grow."

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