The significance of the Inter Guiana Games reposes both in its importance as a symbol of friendship among the three Guianas and in the opportunity that provides for healthy competition among young people. The real spirit of the Games was patently evident at the opening of its Forty Second staging here in Georgetown just a few days ago. Never mind the fact that the participating countries are all at the lower end of international sport at a time when nations elsewhere have infused sport into their foreign policy, making it in some cases the most important mechanism for promoting tourism and attracting the rest of the world to whatever else they may have to offer. The Games, it has to be said, have served the purpose of sustaining a modicum of what the diplomats term “friendly ties” among three countries one of which remains one of the few remaining ‘jewels In a colonial crown. The other two have enjoyed what has been, at best, an uneasy relationship that has, on more than one occasion, spilled over into conflict. If the Games are no Olympics, therefore, they, nonetheless serve the universal purpose of building relations among nations.
For all the good that Inter Guiana Games continues to serve, however, the hosting of this year’s event – or, more correctly, series of events that comprise the Inter Guiana Games – Guyana, serves, among other things, as a timely reminder of Guyana’s profound underachievement in its development of sport; and if it is felt that nothing is accomplished by belaboring the point one only has to listen to the complaints of frustrated athletes who are the real victims but who, frankly, have no real power to alter the course of events. We in the media are among the guilty ones. We tinker with the issues without really addressing them, The net effect of this is that we are guilty of sustaining a status quo that is altogether undeserving of our support.
What is true and what we really should be saying is that there is really no good excuse for our unchanging backwardness in the field of sport, including our inability to properly host an event as modest as the Inter Guiana Games.. unless we can provide the powers that be of their limitations. Includding the fact that their professed commitment to building sport continues to be called into question, we may as well drop the pretence of being the ‘watchdogs’ that we say we are.
Long before the torch was lit for the Games there were complaints about about a lack of facilities and amenities for practice. Complaints by some of the coaches and athletes themselves. Not a lot can be said for example, for the preparation of a female football team that was humiliated by its opponents for no other reason than the fact that they were hastily assembled purely for the sake of the event.
We can no longer conceal the fact that there really is no systematic programme in place for the development of our sportsmen and women and what events like the Inter Guiana Games actually do – their undoubted importance, notwithstanding, is to expose what sometimes seems like a farcical lip service to sport.
No one who truly understands accepts the excuse of too little funds any longer. What is more valid than the excuse of being broke is the increasingly popular view that sport is not really regarded as central to nation-building and that we are simply going through the motions.
The offence that such truths often give have everything to do with people’s preoccuations with ‘fighting their corners’ and little if anything to do with being wronged. The truth is that the only ones who should really feel hard done by are people like the female football team whose humiliation really had nothing to do with their lack of commitment but because they were let down by the people who‘run things.’
Of course we must continue to participate in the Inter Guiana Games since, even in the circumstances that we find ourselves, it is still an honour for our athletes who represent their country. Perhaps, some day we will come to realize the terrible injustice that we have done to successive generations of young people who have worked hard to do Guyana proud and we may even be inclined to do something to change that.