Dear Editor,
The Olympic Games in many ways are intended to unite countries from all angles. Founder Pierre de Coubertin saw them as an avenue to assemble political enemies under one roof or bring them together.
As for medals, an athlete’s participation is as important as attaining a medal. So, whether someone qualifies with a ‘B’ standard time, or was selected as a wild card entry, etc, this is also an accomplishment in its own right which we should learn to appreciate.
There are many contributing factors to a country making it onto the medals list and in my opinion, Guyana is far from achieving that. It is rather unfair for anyone to blame the head of the current Guyana Olympic Association for Guyana’s failure to medal at the just concluded Rio 2016 Olympic Games.
Perhaps the government of the day can consider allowing the Ministry of Sport to once again have its independent office and have $5 billion for sports as a start during the 2017 Budget. This will be added to what is available to all the sports fraternities which receive funding from overseas towards the expenses of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.
Yours faithfully,
T Pemberton
