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  • 18 hours ago
It's been just about two weeks since Trinidad and Tobago returned from the CARIFTA Games with our second biggest medal haul of 35 since 2010.

In doing so, Team TTO finished second on the medal table for only the second time behind Jamaica and ahead of Bahamas.

And while that performance has drawn praise, T&T sprint legend Ato Boldon isn't getting carried away.
Transcript
00:00I was very happy to see TNT get second, but I am one of those who believe that you do
00:05not give credit to somebody for what they are supposed to do.
00:08We have this thing in Trinidad where the patient is flatlining and we get a little blip on the EKG
00:14monitor and go, oh my gosh, look, progress, success.
00:17I can process two thoughts in my brain.
00:22Yes, the TNT team did well at Karifta. They finished second to Jamaica and it was an improvement in performance
00:29off of last year.
00:31We still have a lot of work lately to do.
00:33And the real test is not Karifta. The real test is World Juniors, where I believe our last medal at
00:40World Juniors is 2016.
00:44Okay, so now you're getting a sense of why I'm not really ready to, you know, to pop any champagne
00:49yet.
00:50The award-winning track and field television analyst has been a fervent critic of athletics administration in TNT and he
00:57pinpointed why we are still behind Jamaica and Bahamas, despite our recent Karifta success.
01:02But the truth is that the machine that we have is not the machine that Jamaica has. It's not the
01:09machine that the Bahamas has.
01:11I said for years, if you put some serious money into the high school system and make it cool.
01:17I've been to Trams a number of times. Trams is cool. Everybody wants to be there. The adults want to
01:22be there.
01:22The kids want to be there. The in-betweens want to be there.
01:37The four-time Olympic medalist insists more investment is needed to close the gap on Jamaica and Bahamas, but he
01:43admits it's going to be a difficult task.
01:45I believe that the way to rescue our system is to make it look a lot more like Bahamas and
01:50Jamaica, and that is, you have to get serious about your high school system because our clubs, you know, produce
01:57a J. Hugh Gordon, a Daryl Brown, a Kishon, but they don't produce like that anymore.
02:03And the Federation just lost its number one sponsor, the NGC. So it's not, it's tough times now.
02:12Terence Clark, TV6 Sport.
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