Con­grat­u­la­tions to Bri­an Lewis, pres­i­dent of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC), of­fi­cials of the T&T Com­mon­wealth Games As­so­ci­a­tion (TTC­GA), the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs and the three (3) mem­ber com­mit­tee — Kwanieze John, Rheeza Grant and Chanelle Young for win­ning the bid to host the 2021 Com­mon­wealth Youth Games (CYG) from Au­gust 1-7.

The CYG will not on­ly re­sult in the top ath­letes from the 71 Com­mon­wealth coun­tries com­pet­ing against each oth­er in nine dis­ci­plines for glo­ry but al­so pro­vide an op­por­tu­ni­ty for T&T to show­case it­self to the rest of the Com­mon­wealth and the rest of the world.

The ben­e­fits for T&T can ex­tend be­yond the sev­en days of com­pe­ti­tion in­to medi­um to long term in­ter­na­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tions in sport, busi­ness and tourism.

Tavakkoli (2014) in his 'Study of the Ef­fect of the Com­mon­wealth Youth Games 2008 on the Sport Tourism in Pune City,' stat­ed the city of Pune, In­dia, ben­e­fit­ted from de­vel­op­ment in sports in­fra­struc­ture, job cre­ation and an in­creased in the stag­ing of na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions post 2008.

In terms of in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment, the ex­ist­ing ath­let­ic sta­di­um was ren­o­vat­ed to meet in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards, and spend­ing as made on hos­tels, three and five star ho­tels to house of­fi­cials and ath­letes. The bus fleet was al­so boost­ed to en­cour­age pub­lic trans­port, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the games to min­i­mize traf­fic con­ges­tion. Tavakkoli (2014) notes that af­ter the games, all the 2008 fa­cil­i­ties and in­fra­struc­ture were used by na­tion­al camps, schools, and for na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al games. Af­ter the 2008 CYG, the city of Pune con­tin­ued to host com­pe­ti­tions with ath­letes and of­fi­cials from both In­dia and oth­er parts of the world at­tend­ing.

A ma­jor ad­van­tage that T&T presents is that the fa­cil­i­ties for the events are al­ready es­tab­lished to a large ex­tent.

The Hasley Craw­ford Sta­di­um; the Rac­quet Cen­tre, the Aquat­ic Cen­tre and the na­tion­al Cy­cling Velo­drome will on be on show not on­ly for the 2021 games but al­so for mar­ket­ing to in­ter­na­tion­al clubs and fed­er­a­tions as fu­ture train­ing and com­pe­ti­tion venues.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the TTC­GA will have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to work with the min­istries, the THA, busi­ness­es, cul­tur­al artists and the peo­ple of T&T, to en­sure that Trin­ba­go cul­ture is well rep­re­sent­ed and mar­ket­ed to the rest of the world.

The ex­pe­ri­ences that the ath­letes, of­fi­cials and fans achieve must mo­ti­vate them to re­turn to T&T and those who fol­low the 2021 games via tra­di­tion­al me­dia- tele­vi­sion and print- and so­cial me­dia in­ter­est must al­so be piqued in­to want­i­ng to vis­it the shores of T&T.

By host­ing the CYG 2021, the po­ten­tial for an eco­nom­ic mul­ti­pli­er ef­fect is great as was ev­i­dent in Pune 2008 where there was ob­served growth in food and bev­er­age, cul­tur­al and hand­craft and trav­el­ling ser­vices.

The TTC­GA has two years to col­lab­o­rate with all its ma­jor lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al stake­hold­ers to make CYG 2021 the best ever event for ath­letes and of­fi­cials and the best ever cul­tur­al ex­pe­ri­ence. There will be chal­lenges, but the TTC­GA has the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­view the post­mortems of pre­vi­ous games such as the Ba­hamas 2017 to en­sure that all ad­van­tages are max­i­mized and all dis­ad­van­tages are elim­i­nat­ed or min­i­mized in­to be­ing in­con­se­quen­tial.

"I don't feel it is nec­es­sary to know ex­act­ly what I am. The main in­ter­est in life and work is to be­come some­one else that you were not in the be­gin­ning." Michel Fou­cault

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