INVEST IN SPORTS

Prime Minister Dr. Keith Mitchell

PRIME MINISTER Dr. Keith Mitchell wants his regional counterparts to see sports as a worthwhile investment for regional economic development.

Addressing the 34th Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government which ended last Saturday, Mitchell said the earnings from some of the Caribbean’s elite athletes are clear indications that, if taken seriously, sports could generate economic activities within the region, reports CMC.

“The earnings top athletes could bring to the region, as well as the destination promotion through their feats, must make sport a worthwhile economic pursuit in which we must now consciously invest,” Mitchell said in his address.

“To understand the value of sports to the region, we do not have to cast our eyes too far back; for, indeed, the memories of the Summer Olympics in London must all be fresh in our memories,” he told the leaders while explaining that per capita and per head of population, the nations in the Caribbean were the most successful at those games.

“We took on the world and won and we all beamed with collective pride with the feats of a kid from Trelawny, Jamaica, named Usain Bolt…another from Gouyave, Grenada, named Kirani James…and a humble kid from Toco, Trinidad, that the world now knows as Keshon Walcott,” he said.

He also repeated an earlier call for the establishment of sporting academies to explore the sporting talents of the youth in the region. “But we must accept that a lot of these world-class athletes have been developed by chance and we must also wonder about the many more talented ones that would have been left behind just because we have not had an organised system of developing and sustaining our athletes,” he said.

“The development of academies and centres of excellence are issues to be explored by sporting associations, but with aggressive nudging and encouragement from our various ministries of sport.”

Well-known for his love of Cricket, Dr. Mitchell welcomed the Caribbean Premiere League (CPL), which bowls off later this month, saying that it’s an encouraging start in the professionalising of the sport in the region.

“The fact that nearly 75 of the region’s players will now be able to survive year-round because of the CPL’s arrangement, we believe, is a development worthy of noting,” he noted.

“But we still have on-going concerns about the governance of the game in the region and the need for the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) to further democratise its operations and make more transparent its dealings.” (LS)