Olympism

We are in the year 2012 and the single biggest sporting event is the London Olympics. One of the biggest concerns in the world of sport today is the prevalence of performance enhancing drugs by athletes in just about every discipline. It seems that the desire to win at all costs is the single most important fact driving sportspeople to performance enhancing drugs today and the deleterious effects as highlighted by scientists have little impact on the spread of this unsavoury practice.

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In the recent past there has been talk emanating from the Ministry of Sport and the National Sports Council regarding the reactivation of the National Sports Assembly here in St Vincent and the Grenadines.

The decision to reactivate the Assembly may well be a good idea in and of itself. Getting it to work is literally a horse of a different colour.

Origins

The idea of establishing a National Sports Assembly (NSA) arose when discussions were taking place on the creation of a National Sports Council (NSC).
The National Sports Council Act No. 9 of 1988 established the organization as the body responsible for the administration of all sports facilities belonging to the government of St Vincent and the Grenadines excluding the Victoria Park. The latter was omitted because it was already under the ambit of the Kingstown Town Board and was seen as the nation’s premier outdoor entertainment centre in addition to being a sports facility. Indeed the bulk of income at the Victoria Park came from shows, inclusive of carnival, held there during the year. Often times the entertainers gained precedence over sporting organisations requesting the same date to host activities there. Read the rest of this entry »

On Saturday last Team Athletics St Vincent and the Grenadines hosted its annual Relay Classic at the Grammar School Playing Field. There was absolutely no effort made by those responsible for the playing fields in this country to have the facility prepared for the kind of competition that this event has generated over the past few years. It was in stark contrast however to the attention paid to the Arnos Vale Playing Field in preparation for the upcoming One Day International (ODI) Cricket Series pitting the West Indies against Australia.

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St Vincent and the Grenadines recently played host to a Training of Trainers workshop on the revised Caribbean Coaching Certification Programme (CCCP). The workshop brought together coaches from around the Caribbean including Guadeloupe and was coordinated by this country’s National Olympic Committee (NOC).

The CCCP is now the property of the Caribbean Association of National Olympic Committees (CANOC), an organization established in 2003 to facilitate collaboration between NOCs of the region including those of French, Dutch, Spanish and English-speaking nations.

CANOC has been keen on ensuring that the region is adequately served with coaches from the most basic level through to the elite level.

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