The Tribune

By RENALDO DORSETT

Sports Reporter

rdorsett@tribunemedia.net

BAHAMAS Association of Athletic Associations president Rosamunde Carey addressed the media on several issues surrounding the organisation, and assessed the first few months of her term in office.

She outlined the new concepts the executives sought out to accomplish most notably – improved fundraising, the development of the Arise programme, the constitution reform committee’s work and the “controversy” surrounding the Olympic Games.

The Arise programme was awarded $15,000 grant from the Inter-American Development Bank.

“We’re concerned with not just the athletic part of the athlete, but we’re concerned with the holistic. We have a lot of athletes who come to practice who didn’t eat, who don’t have proper gear, who don’t have books for school, so we can’t just focus on one area. They’re not going to perform at their best if they are missing a whole lot of things,” she said.

“This initiative is to work with the grassroots athletes to see how best we can help them holistically. We can provide food, equipment, mentoring so they don’t fall behind in their grades, so this is aimed at growing the athletes holistically.”

She also alluded to initial steps being made for the federation to expand its fund raising and self-help programmes. Initiatives for merchandising and a proposed BAAA online store were introduced.

“As a former treasurer, there have always been budgetary restraints and now you have people talking about their limited number of revenue. We need to start looking at ways the federation approaches merchandising,” she said.

“Based on our prior successes, we have had one or two more corporate sponsors looking to expand their sponsorship of us.”

Team travel and successes were delineated and BAAA policy and partnerships with the BOC and IAAF were explained in depth. The protection and advancement of the federations coaches and athletes is paramount and central to federation’s existence and mandate.

“The BAAA is the only governing body of track and field in the Bahamas. In stating that I want to be emphatically clear. The Olympics belongs to the BOC. The BAAA Nationals belongs to the BAAA. If they [BOC] wanted that ‘Olympic Trials’ branding then work with the federation. The BAAA is in no way in any feud with the BOC, the Secretary General needs to have a conversation with his President because we were one in Rio,” she said.

Carey also addressed the much debated topic of Shaunae Miller possibly chasing the 200/400m double.

Miller won the Olympic gold medal in the 400m but the Bahamian public debated for days whether Miller should have run the 200m and chased the historic double.

Miller gave voice to the controversy when she returned home and gave an interview with ZSR 103.5 when she said she indeed wanted to run the 200m in Rio, despite not running the 200m at the BAAA Nationals.

“The trials are the finite decision making as to who will be in what in the Olympics. It was stated, it was sent it was communicated that the event you want to participate in for a national team, you had to compete in that event at the trials. If you did not compete in that event at the trials you were not put in that event at the Olympics. The only decision that could have changed that would have been that if the athlete came to the trials and competed.

“We just happened to have a plethora of qualifiers in a particular event. The athletes that showed up, competed and qualified were entered,” she said.

“The integrity of the trials has to stand. The federation must be governed by integrity and fairness, not just by one but for all. We had three athletes who qualified, showed up to trials, competed were selected to the team, their parents were down to watch them to perform. How do you say to an athlete at that point that you’re no longer running?

“As the president I have to look out for the well being of all the athletes. Not just our seniors, but our juniors, because you don’t want them to think that this could happen to them.”