TRINIDAD AND Tobago Olympic Committee (TTOC) president Brian Lewis issued an official request to Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar and representatives of the Ministry of Housing and Ministry of Sport, in respect of support for expedited housing for athletes who have performed national service within a defined criteria.

Over the past four weeks, the TTOC boss has been openly voicing his thoughts towards the establishment of a transparent Elite Athlete Housing Assistance Programme.

Lewis’ most recent developments in this regard has seen the delivery of an official proposal to the aforementioned Ministries requesting their immediate attention and urgency towards this unique idea. Primarily, such an initiative will assist in allowing the athlete a successful transition out of sport and back into the real world.

The purpose of the policy proposal is to implement a strategy that rewards the national athletes for their long and meritorious national duty and service at Olympics, Para-Olympics and World Level Championships (Continental and Regional).

The idea of housing assistance for national athletes is based on the reality that athletes, who dedicate years of their youthful life to representing the twin-island republic at Olympic and World level sport, make tremendous sacrifices in respect of their careers, families, and income.

According to Lewis, “the athletes’ choice to dedicate themselves to national duty and service through sport ostensibly places athletes at a significant social and economic disadvantage. The dream of qualifying and becoming an Olympic and World champion commands dedication, sacrifice and money.

Currently the burden is a de- motivating one for athletes.

“Many athletes have served the country with distinction for five or more years and it is proposed they receive formidable consideration for expedited housing assistance. Some athletes struggle to adjust to real life when their sporting career ends.”

The former Harvard Rugby Club player also aligned his proposal with the TTOC’s “10 Olympic Gold medals by 2024” vision - Athlete Welfare and Preparation Fund. Lewis is also aware of the various and strict criteria that must be met to ensure such a programme is indeed a success, both for the athlete and country.

He believes that athletes will be required to meet the Housing Development Corporation (HDC) mortgage criteria and will have to honour their mortgage obligations.

The TTOC head added, “the programme will remove one less burden of providing a home for their family and ensure a sense of security when their careers have ended. The HDC we are advised, currently have a programme that guarantees expedited housing distribution to the members of our protective services. The TTOC proposes a similar policy with expedited housing distribution to athletes who meet an agreed criterion.”

In the interest of the criteria remaining transparent, fair and accountable, the TTOC, in conjunction with the National Sporting Organisations (NSO) will clarify, confirm and recommend the athletes that deserve merit for their services for Trinidad and Tobago.

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SportAccord President Marius Vizer tonight accused the International Olympic Committee (IOC) of putting pressure on Federations to withdraw from his organisation following his explosive speech here yesterday.

A total of 27 Summer Olympic Federations and the International Paralympic Committee suspended its association with SportAccord earlier today.

But Vizer does not appear ready to step-back from his confrontation with the IOC President Thomas Bach after he accused him of being in charge of an organisation that is "expired, outdated, wrong, unfair and not at all transparent".

Vizer claimed his comments were justified but the IOC were just trying to protect itself.

"I tell the reality because I have been living in this family for many years," Vizer said in an interview broadcast tonight on Euronews.

"So, in reality that is the voice of the International Federations and I just expressed in one day, in a global message, their voice but yesterday the IOC, instead of analysing the content of what I said, what is true [and] what is not true, what is the next step to correct that and to offer a clear picture, they started to put pressure on some of the International Federations to react, in my opinion, not in a correct way.

"I am happy with the support of my spirit because what I say is true and nobody can stop that.

"You have to make a distinction in sport between people who live for sport and people who live from sport.

"For those who live, more or less exclusively from sport, it’s very attractive and very interesting to defend the system because the virtues of the system, let’s say of the IOC, has lots of tentacles in different directions.

"So the question is very simple, do we want to clean up the story or cover the story?"

Vizer promised he would continue to follow the road he has set out on and not buckle under intimidation.

"I was a soldier and my life was long and difficult till now, and always in my strategies I have different versions," he told Euronews.

"So be sure that I am prepared for the second and the third step, not only with speeches but also with action and strategies.

"The question is to clean-up the system and to make it fair for the benefit of sport.

"Not a system that defends itself and a specific group of leaders or cardinals of sport because we don’t need that and sport doesn’t need that.

"I don’t care if some people are afraid to say that but I say that.

"We don’t need cardinals of sport.

"We don’t need popes.

"We need fair leaders who are models and examples for us."

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After several attempts at arriving in Sochi yesterday were halted by uncompromising weather, our plane was forced to land 200 kilometres to the west in the wonderfully named Mineralnye Vode airfield, before resuming its journey four hours later once the conditions had calmed.

An inauspicious start, but the fierceness of last night’s rain paled into insignificance in comparison with the thunderstorms which shook the Olympic Movement this morning as SportAccord President Marius Vizer launched the fiercest attack on the International Olympic Committee in generations.

In his opening speech at this morning’s General Assembly, Vizer accused IOC President Thomas Bach of trying to block projects, claimed the IOC lacked transparency and that its Agenda 2020 reform process had brought "hardly any benefit" to sport.

And that was just him warming up.

“Mr. President, stop blocking the SportAccord strategy in its mission to identify and organise Conventions and multi-sport games,” Vizer added.

He then labelled the IOC system as being “expired, outdated, wrong and unfair”.

By the time he had finished, Bach, like most in the room, appeared taken aback, but rallied well, thanking Vizer drolly for his “friendly” welcome before stoutly defending his record and claiming his adversary’s views were out of step with the International Federations.

Not quite fighting fire with fire, but managing a response that was strong, but also relatively statesmanlike.

In an environment renowned for soft words and public platitudes, with messages therein invariably subtle and unambiguous, this was stirring stuff. The judoka attempting to dispatch the fencer with an ippon before his adversary had a chance to foil the attack.

I have never seen anything like it in my short time covering this Movement, but neither had many of my far more senior colleagues either. The latter days of Primo Nebiolo’s time as head of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) was one period when relations were similarly fractious with the IOC, some said, but never have simmering tensions erupted into open warfare quite like this before.

Of course, it was an open secret that relations between IOC and SportAccord were tense, as signified simply by the fact that the IOC Executive Board chose not to meet here for the first time since the Convention began over a decade ago.

But as news of Vizer’s outburst began to filter out of the auditorium and through the rest of the Expo Centre, there was bafflement, bemusement and excitement - from journalists at least - that the long and arduous journey had been thoroughly worth it.

More than anything else, everyone seemed to have been knocked off balance. Public Relations gurus were rushing around as multiple clients batted to have their say, advisors struggled to conjure an appropriate response or to direct their charges to the right people. Even Bach’s entourage seemed slightly rattled.

“He’s speaking to a journalist, he’s speaking to a journalist,” I heard one assistant warn another, gesticulating wildly in the direction of Bach.

News gradually filtered out that the IAAF and the International Shooting Sport Federation had resigned their SportAccord membership and that a mysterious letter existed, expressing the opposition of a groups of Federations to Vizer’s words, the precise number of which seemed to be different whoever you spoke to.

As we were still digesting this, Bach suddenly appeared alongside Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah, the Association of National Olympic Committees President, who, with Bach and Vizer, were the so-called triumvirate of Olympic Movement powerbrokers.

“I’ll go for Bach and you intercept Sheikh Ahmad,” barked my editor, setting off with a turn of speed usually saved for when coffee supplies are dwindling in a press centre, as throngs of other people with the same idea began a similar move.

But, because many of these were International Federation Presidents themselves, we were not short of people to speak to, and almost all were open and happy to talk. Responses ranged from “we will wait until the dust has settled” to “Mr Vizer has shown today he does not know how to do politics”.

What was clear was that the applecart had been well and truly upturned.

Former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson once said that a “week is a long time in politics”, and at times today it seemed even an hour was a long time.

Given this, it would be rash to conclude too strongly about what will happen next, but it does seem that Vizer miscalculated and has now bitten off far more than he can chew.

Surely, rather than acting so rashly, he should have told the members about his impending assault, and at least prepared some sympathetic representatives to stand up afterwards in support of his message? As it is, it is like a general launching a coup d'état but without any troops to back up his bluster.

Meetings of the Association of Summer and Winter Olympic Federations over the next two days will tell us more about the state of play. Yet, as things stand, Vizer now risks losing every Olympic member of SportAccord (except for the International Judo Federation of course, for the obvious reason that he is the President) and, if that happens, either he will have to resign or his organisation will have been irreversibly weakened.

If you are not already convinced that events have already descended out of his control, then the fact he has also declared a second battle with Sheikh Ahmad’s ANOC seems a further nail in the coffin.

Later in the Assembly, the inaugural World Beach Games was awarded to Sochi in 2019, with SportAccord now appearing as the driving force, while Vizer also expressed his excitement for the black tie “Oscars of Sport” taking place during the Convention in three days’ time.

Hold on, wasn’t ANOC’s inaugural awards ceremony in Bangkok last November hyped over and over again as the "Oscars of Sport"? And isn’t the World Beach Games the foremost project of Sheikh Ahmad’s Presidency; his defining legacy more than anything else?

The Kuwaiti Royal is therefore unlikely let go of it that easily, and will take the Oscars line as a further snub, and in a vague statement this evening it was made clear that ANOC plans to go ahead with its own Beach Games, revealing plans to “announce some exciting plans in June 2015”.

A peculiar day then, to the extent that the presence of Russian President Vladimir Putin, someone not averse to making some political headlines of his own this year, was almost an irrelevance, lost in a sporting dispute that was less of a Cold War and more a simmering one at times veering towards boiling over.


And to think, this was meant to be a gentle day before the Convention properly got underway.

But, while it is perhaps not to be recommended as a political tactic, you have to admire Vizer’s sheer nerve, and the most refreshing thing today has been the blunt, open and forthright nature of it all.

I wrote two weeks ago about the dominance of PR in sport, and how much of it is choreographed and bland. The aforementioned ANOC statement, crafted as it was by their consultancy arm, JTA, was the only exception to this, but everyone else was, if not completely honest, then at least prepared to express clear views, and express them strongly.

And, you know what, while it seems likely Vizer will be outmaneuvered, I sincerely hope he has some fight left in him to continue his attack over the rest of the week.

Because, more than anything else, it has all been great fun so far.

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Amateur boxing returns to Siparia on Friday.
After a two-year absence, boxing is back as part of the Siparia Borough Regional Corporation Festival.
Fight time is 7 p.m. at the Siparia Regional Corporation. And next Wednesday the action shifts to Point Fortin from 7 p.m. at Cheetah’s Bar in New Lands.
The Trinidad and Tobago Amateur Boxing Association has also planned cards at the Arima Borough Festival, Chaguanas Borough Festival and also San Fernando City week.
Both cards this weekend and next week, will involve some of Trinidad and Tobago’s top amateur boxers. They are using the cards as warm-ups for the upcoming Pan American qualifiers. This will be a final chance to make the T&T team. The qualifiers are set for June 4-9 in Tijuana, Mexico. The selected boxers leave on May 10, for a four-week live-in camp in Havana, Cuba.
To date, 15 boxers are on the short-list for selection to the T&T team for the Pan Am qualifiers. These include Commonwealth Games bronze medallist Michael Alexander, as well as experienced boxers Andrew Fermin, Aaron Prince and Aaron Cumberbatch who have been part of several T&T national teams.
Also in the initial squad are Christopher De Freitas, Anthony Joseph , Jean–Paul Cooper, Jude Franklin, Justin Parris, Christian Mc Donald, Chimere Taylor, Ingle Charles, Stephanie Allen, Patrice Kalloo, and Kimberly Jackson.

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