Trinidad and Tobago is positioning itself as a destination for sports events, business and politics, its National Olympic Committee president Brian Lewis told SportBusiness International.
IN TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO you don’t have to travel far to be reminded of the lingering love affair between the people of this Caribbean nation and its sporting heroes.
And for a country of only 1.3 million, there are more of them than you might at first imagine.
The twin island nation reveres those who have made it proud thanks to their heroics with bat and ball, and track and field, and that reverence is reflected in the naming of stadiums across the land.
The 20,000-seat national stadium in the capital Port of Spain is named after Hasely Crawford, who became the country’s first Olympic gold medal winner when he ran 10.06 seconds to win the 100 metres at the 1976 Games in Montreal.
Brian Lara, the legendary cricketer who holds both the records for the highest score in first class cricket, with 501 for Warwickshire in an English country game, and the Test record, for his remarkable 400 not-out against England in
2004, is immortalised in a stadium built in San Fernando to host the 2011 Cricket World Cup.
The exploits of footballer Dwight Yorke, who scored 48 goals in fewer than 100 league games for Manchester United and played for a number of other English Premier League clubs as well as his national team, has given his name to a
stadium in his native Tobago.
In the Central district of Trinidad, only a short drive from the heart of Port of Spain, a stadium named after Ato Boldon, whose haul of four Olympic medals and a World Championship 100 metres gold puts him among the greats of world sprinting, has been joined by two new world-class facilities which are set to make the site at Couva a sports hub for the country, the Caribbean and beyond.
There, just off the Churchill-Roosevelt Highway which links the capital to the south of the country, the finishing touches are being put to two new facilities designed to boost Trinidadian sport as well as at attract visiting.