NAS­SAU, Ba­hamas – Pres­i­dent of the North Amer­i­can, Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean Ath­let­ic As­so­ci­a­tion (NACAC), Mike Sands has called for CARI­COM to con­sid­er es­tab­lish­ing a high-lev­el sports com­mis­sion or sub­com­mit­tee.

Speak­ing on Sat­ur­day’s Talk­Sports pro­gramme, Sands con­tend­ed that po­lit­i­cal lead­ers need­ed more struc­tured and con­tin­u­ous en­gage­ment with sport be­yond the re­gion­al group­ing’s ex­ist­ing fo­cus on crick­et.

“Maybe it’s time for CARI­COM to se­lect one of those lead­ers to be the chair of a sports com­mis­sion, if they don’t al­ready have one.

“There should be a sub­com­mit­tee prob­a­bly for sports. That’s the point I make – not just crick­et, sport,” Sands main­tained.

The NACA pres­i­dent said there was an op­por­tu­ni­ty to build on the re­cent en­gage­ment be­tween CARI­COM and re­gion­al ath­let­ics, par­tic­u­lar­ly as prepa­ra­tions be­gin for Guyana to host the 2027 CARIF­TA Games.

“If we re­al­ly want to sen­si­tise our heads to the im­por­tance of sport, I think they need to be gath­ered in one place on a more reg­u­lar ba­sis,” Sands said.

“…Pol­i­tics change the in­di­vid­ual, but it should not change some prin­ci­pal things about na­tion-build­ing.”

Sands al­so stressed that any re­gion­al ini­tia­tive should recog­nise the wider CARIF­TA fam­i­ly and not be con­fined sole­ly to CARI­COM mem­ber­ship.

He not­ed that while all CARIF­TA mem­bers may not be­long to the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of East­ern Caribbean States (OECS), OECS mem­bers form part of the CARIF­TA struc­ture.

Sands said one of the longer-term out­comes should be a stronger re­la­tion­ship be­tween CARI­COM and the wider sport­ing com­mu­ni­ty, cre­at­ing more reg­u­lar di­a­logue on the con­tri­bu­tion sport can make to na­tion­al and re­gion­al de­vel­op­ment.

CMC