President of Commonwealth Sport Dr Donald Rukare has described last week’s visit by the group’s executive board to Barbados as very successful.
His comments came as the weeklong trip concluded with a media briefing at the Hilton Barbados hotel.
“As you know we arrived here a couple of days ago to have our executive board meeting which has been very successful, but also over the last two days during our time here, apart from the warm hospitality that we have received from our hosts, we were able to meet with His Excellency the President of Barbados and the Honorable Minister of Youth and Sports.”
“We were able to see your sports facilities and also enjoy some of the sights and sounds of Barbados. More importantly, we were also able to engage a bit with your culture through the road tennis that we played,” Dr Rukare said.
Dr Rukare revealed that the organisation’s major focus in the coming months will be the successful execution of the Commonwealth Games in Scotland.
“We have really enjoyed ourselves and following this in very short order, we’ll be going to Glasgow for the 26th edition of the games and we look forward to teams from Barbados and the region participating,” he said.
Chief executive officer of Commonwealth Sport, Katie Sadleir said progress was made in a number of critical areas during last week’s meetings.
“The major ones included the approval of the business plan for next year.
So we currently have a 10-year strategic plan and every time around this period during the year we revisit that strategic plan and sort of say what are the priorities going forward.The board has approved the business plan and the budget associated with that,” Sadleir revealed.
President of the Barbados Olympic Association and Commonwealth Sport vice-president, Sandra Osbourne said while she would love to see road tennis being added to the Commonwealth Games, she admitted the road ahead would be challenging.
“The reality is that Commonwealth Sport Barbados is also the Barbados Olympic Association, we are one and the same organisation. Our constitution and by-laws, require us to recognise sports that are recognised by the International Olympic Committee. Therefore, road tennis is not a sport that we recognise or has the ability to be affiliated to,” Osbourne noted.
“However, we are very aware of the desire of the government of Barbados to promote road tennis, and we have tried to work with them whenever we are invited to assist in directing them. We’ve certainly shared with them the pathway that one needs to take to get from here to there without being experts ourselves in the area, because it’s not something that we’ve ever done.”
(KH)
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