‘Playing games’ with sport

Quite how it turned out that a contingent of national athletes travelling to represent Guyana at the CARIFTA Games in The Bahamas found themselves issued with one-way airline tickets, is a bit of a mind-boggler though it has to be said that astounding anomalies in the administration of sport have not, historically, been altogether alien to us.

The Bahamas blunder is a microcosm of a wider condition of enduring ineptitude that has long bedevilled the administration of sport in Guyana and however unpalatable it may sound occurrences of this kind are a reflection of how sport is viewed against the backdrop of the broader tapestry of what we loosely describe as national development.

There are other issues that arise here…like whether or not there ought not to exist some kind of logistical linkage between a travelling contingent of national athletes and the Ministry of Sport, a linkage sufficiently robust to have caused the Ministry to ‘pick up’ the anomaly much earlier and undertake a more timely remedy. More than that, was there not a sufficiently adequate interregnum between Team Guyana’s outward journey and its return to have caused the matter of the ‘one-way’ ticket to be remedied before it arrived at the point of something of an embarrassment?

That we are lagging considerably in the development of sport shows in our underachievement in terms of the returns that have accrued to us when compared, for example, with other countries right here in the region that are really no better resourced than we are. The key difference, historically, has been our failure to create a real link between sport and overall national accomplishment and international recognition and to suitably equip it (sports) to deliver those gains.

Over time we have had to watch some of our CARICOM and continental neighbours (Jamaica being by far the best example) rake in the rich global returns that accrue from walking the talk by fashioning both the requisite national institutions and actively promoting the growth of a culture of commitment to sport as a facet of its overarching nation-building matrix. Here in Guyana sport has always been (with a handful of exceptions) mostly a recreational ad-on, never mind the official rhetoric designed to make it seem like much more.

In the instances of some of our neighbouring countries the inputs have included, a priori, investments in the requisite sports infrastructure, the training of sports administrators and specialized instructors in the various disciplines, high-quality coaching and participation in international events designed to test the mettle of ‘home-grown’ talent against the best of the rest, internationally. There is simply no excuse for Guyana not, incrementally, going down this road, over time.

If, in the history of independent Guyana, there has ever been created a blueprint underpinned by an ambition to take sport ‘places’ then it must surely be the best kept national secret. What we have had to endure, for the most part, is repetitive rhetoric about sport being a ‘nation builder,’ attended by what, comparatively, have been, for the most part, tokenistic efforts to fashion rhetoric into reality.

Even without ‘jumping the gun’ in terms of whatever probe may ensue into the one-way ticket fiasco we are, surely, altogether entitled to wonder aloud as to if the whole sorry one-way ticket saga is ‘for real’ and how on earth a blunder of that kind could have occurred under the nose of the Ministry of Sport. Frankly, in countries where sport dwells at the very top of the development agenda, such an astounding anomaly would have triggered a national clamour. Here in Guyana the practice is to have these occurrences pass with a puff of immediate after-the-fact fuss followed by a swift and discreet interment of the matter.

Is the AAG likely to be suitably taken to task over the occurrence? Will the Ministry of Sport and the AAG find some appropriate way of ‘begging pardon’ to our grossly insulted national athletes? The problem here might well be that in matters of this kind contriteness is not, usually, an indulgence of officialdom.

The intervention of the Director of Sports to ‘mop up’ the fiasco by committing government to returning the ‘stranded’ athletes home, while duly acknowledged, is not anywhere near enough to assuage what would appear to be the AAG’s institutional ineptitude. An apology underpinned by suitable expressions of sincerity and contriteness ought, surely, to be forthcoming and it is for the Director of

Sports to engage the AAG on that score. Beyond that, the ‘return ticket’ fiasco surely creates an opening for government, through the Ministry of Sport, to read the ‘riot act’ to those governing bodies in the various sports disciplines that often appear to parade their autonomy from state intervention as a blanket with which to ‘cover up’ what, not infrequently, is their abject operational incompetence… and sometimes worse. Meanwhile, sport, which, substantively, is the ‘property’ of the people of Guyana, is ridden roughshod over by indifferent bureaucrats.

The one-way ticket saga is a microcosm of a wider national indifference to the role of sport in nationbuilding. That would not have happened in countries where national athletes are held in high esteem and where their endeavours are seen as adding substantive value to the nation as a whole.

Sport is unlikely ever to serve as a ‘nation-builder’ for Guyana if concrete corrective action continues to be supplanted by waffle. There have been instances in which bodies responsible for administering various sports appear to lack vision and insightfulness as well as a sufficient appreciation of what one might call ‘the bigger picture’ insofar as the nexus between sport and nation-building is concerned.

It is high time that we stop ‘playing games’ with sport.