By Irving Ward

Sunday Express

August 31, 1997

Page 19

The 23-year-old sprinter became the country's first World Championship gold medal winner when he sped down the track to victory ahead of Namibian Frankie Fredericks and Brazil's Claudinei De Silva in the 200-metre event in Athens.

His time of 20.01 seconds was relatively slow, well off the 19.32 seconds world mark set by American Michael Johnson in Atlanta last year.

But in the 21 years since Hasely Crawford gave this country its first and still only Olympic gold medal at the Montreal Games in Canada, Boldon's win is T&T's only really outstanding athletic achievement at the highest level.

Indeed, Boldon's achievements apart - and they include his double bronze medal haul in Atlanta last year and his earlier double gold at the World Junior Games in Seoul - only cricketer Brian Lara and golfer Stephen Ames have brought significant glory on the international circuit for the red, white and black.

s the nation celebrates the 35^th anniversary of Independence, it is not clear why more of our sportsmen have not made their mark on the international circuit.

And it is no consolation that in many areas we continue to dominate at the regional level.

Trinidad and Tobago was just two years old as an independent nation when their sportsmen burst on to the international stage in memorable fashion.

At the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo, we had what remains our best-ever Olympic medal haul at a single game.

Wendell Mottley, later to become a minister of government, claimed the silver medal in the 400-yards event. Edwin Roberts copped the bronze in the 200 yards before he and Mottley teamed up with Edwin Skinner and Kent Bernard to take another bronze in the 4 x 440 yards relay.

For a young nation of fewer than one million people still trying to find its identity, a three-medal haul was an outstanding achievement. It whetted the country's appetite for more.

It would be long in coming. Twelve years would go by before Crawford would pass through a shortcut, as Sparrow put it, to post 10.06 seconds and win the Montreal hundred, thus putting the country on the top rung of the rostrum for the first time ever.

Barring Boldon's two bronzes in the 100 and 200 metres in Atlanta, no other athlete in the next two decades would bring home any other type of precious metal.

But athletics was not the only sport in which T&T excelled in the early days of Independence. Back then, bodybuilders Mike Hercules and Christopher Forde were ranked among the best in the world, wicketkeeper Deryck Murray was rated among the world's best glovemen and cyclist Roger Gibbon was good enough to put fear into the hearts of the kings of the world's velodromes; lightweight boxer Johnny De Peiza was into the world rankings, and Jean Pierre - also subsequently to become a minister - led the country's netballers to a World Championship title, shared with Australia and New Zealand, in 1979.

If the athletes have been the ones to fly the flag highest through the years, other sportsmen have provided this country with enough significant performances over the years to leave many satisfied.

Among them is Gene Samuel whose cycling exploits kept world attention long focused on the red, white and black and who eventually earned himself a World Championship bronze medal in August 1991 in Stuttgart, Germany. He also copped three Pan-American Games gold medals in 1984, 1991 and 1994.

But perhaps the sportsman who must head the list of national achievers is Brian Lara. Under Lara's captaincy, T&T were able to win two regional knockout (Shell/Sandals) titles in 1995 and 1996.

These liens on the relatively new one-day cricket trophy were added to the four notches on the Shell Shield (now Red Stripe) in 1970, 1971, 1976 and 1985.

But it was more as batsman than as skipper that the dapper left-hander made his mark. His magnificent knock of 277 against Australia at Sydney in January 1993 was only a taste of what he had in store for T&T and the world.

For just after 11.45 a.m. on April 18, 1994 at the Antigua Recreation Ground, he pulled pacer Chris Lewis to the mid-wicket boundary for four runs to go past the previous best Test innings of 365 not out made against Pakistan by Sir Gary Sobers 36 years earlier in Jamaica's Sabina Park.

His marathon innings eventually ended on 375 but it had already sparked massive celebrations all over the region particularly here at home in T&T.

Mere months later when playing for English County side Warwickshire, the talented former Fatima College student added the record for the highest individual first-class innings. His 501 not out broke a mass of records, including the 36-year-old mark of 499 set by Pakistan's Hanif Mohammed playing for Karachi against Bahawalpur in 1958. On the way to his mammoth achievement, Lara had also obliterated several other English records and by the end of the season he would lead Warwickshire to an unprecedented four major titles.

That was an unforgettable year for Lara and for the country as his name became a household word in all the countries of the former British Empire - and in some places where cricket remains a word in the dictionary!

Another outstanding achiever was the country's first professional golfer, Ames. He broke new ground by becoming the first T&T golfer to win, not one, but two major European PGA titles.

His first success came at the Lyon Open in France in 1994 and then last year he followed that up with a Benson and Hedges Cup victory, outplaying a field of seasoned veterans at the Oxfordshire course in Thames, England.

Claude Noel and Leslie 'Tiger' Stewart would bring our only major boxing glory in 1981 and 1986 respectively.

Noel lifted the WBA light-weight title in Atlantic City, New Jersey, breaking the jaw of his Mexican opponent Rudolfo 'El Gato' Gonzalez in the process. Stewart also knocked out Mervyn 'Pops' Johnson in the ninth round right here at the then National Stadium - now renamed the Hasely Crawford Stadium - to be crowned WBA light heavyweight champ. Unfortunately, neither man would have an extended reign as champion.

T&T's football now has a wealth of professional players - Russell Latapy (Boavista), Dwight Yorke (Aston Villa), Clint Marcelle (Barnsley), Shaka Hislop (Newcastle), Leonson Lewis (Chaves), Anthony Rougier (Hibernian) - playing in prestigious leagues abroad but football remains arguably the most barren of the major sporting disciplines.

Twice, the national team came close to reaching the World Cup Finals. On the first occasion in 1974, some appalling hometown decisions in Port-au-Prince saw Haiti advance to the Finals in Germany ahead of the Kevin Verity - coached Trinidadians. Then 15 years later on November 19, 1989, Everald 'Gally' Cummings, one of the major players on the 1974 squad, led his 'Strike Squad' through an unforgettable campaign tot he brink of qualification for the 1990 Finals in Italy.

Needing but a draw against the United States in their final qualifying match at the then National Stadium, the team fell at the last hurdle.

Home fans will arguably never forget the excruciating pain of the moment when Paul Caligiuri's shot from almost half-line beat goalkeeper Michael Maurice to give the visitors a 1-0 lead. Maurice earned little sympathy with his lame 'sun-in-my-eye' excuse for the costly error.

Several years and post-mortems later, the T&TFA still have not been able to come up with any substantial framework to suggest that the country will be spared another visit to 1989. That remains the country's biggest sporting disappointment since Independence, made all the more poignant in the wake of two subsequently disastrous attempts to reach the 1994 World Cup in the USA and the 1998 World Cup in France.

But there has been no question about T&T's domination of regional football. Despite the occasional challenge from Jamaica, the Shell/Umbro Caribbean Cup title has come home to Port of Spain six out of possible eight times - in 1989, 1992, 1993, 1995, 1996, and 1997. Last year's win was a comprehensive 4-0 thrashing of St Kitts at the Antigua Recreation Ground with a team made up mostly of locally-based players under coach Bertille St Clair.

On the whole though, Boldon and Lara apart, the sporting cupboards look pretty bare for a nation that has been nurturing its sportsmen and sportswomen for the last 35 years…

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