By Treiston Joseph
Newly-elected Vice-president of the Guyana Olympic Association, Godfrey Munroe, is hoping to utilise his new role to aid the development of sports across Guyana.
While no official meeting has yet been held since the new GOA executive has gone into power, Munroe believes that to move sports forward all hands must be on deck.
“One of the things I would like to advocate for is to use the collective capacity of all of the council members of the Olympic family in the sense of formulating inter-committees whether it be for developmental, marketing, revenue generation because I know a lot of people look at the Olympic association and say we get $136 million, but is that enough to fund 23 sports? Realistically, I don’t think so.”
“One of the other things is twinning with other international Olympic associations to do exchange programmes to really help our coaches and athletes,” Munroe shared.
Munroe also highlighted that he intends to use every possible means afforded to the GOA to improve sports, while changing the image of the organisation as well.
“There are a lot of programmes on the IOC provision that you could benefit from, get support from. I think we need persons with the skills and using the collective capacity of each other to have sports for all, development of national sports structure, women in sports provision that is much more meaningful,” Munroe opined.
Meanwhile, Munroe also shared that while the aim will also be to make the GOA more transparent, 2020 is not a realistic target for Olympic success because of the limited hours of training athletes get out of their days.
In addition, Munroe shared that because there is a nucleolus of talent at the junior level across all sports, emphasis should be placed on developing those athletes for the future.
Munroe, who is also the president of the Guyana Table Tennis Association, was instrumental in developing a detailed school programme for the racquet wielding sport. His infusion into the GOA might be just what the doctor ordered for the association that has been anything but successful at the Olympics.
