President of the BVI Athletics Association Steve Augustine has made a special plea to Corporate BVI to get more involved in investing into local sports and athletes in the territory.
The plea came during a recent press conference which was held to welcome home Olympian athlete Chantel Malone for the first time since competing at the Olympic Games in Tokyo Japan.
Augustine pointed to the achievements of local athletes with the present limited resources in store and said with more sponsorship, he believes that lots more can be achieved with the talent in the BVI.
He said, “I stand here very proudly with my Puma logo on my shirt and I love the fact that the Athletics Association is indeed sponsored by Puma, but what I would really love is to see Corporate BVI get more involved. And I’m not taking anything away from the BVI Olympic Committee, Skelton Group of Companies, your parents (Chantel Malone), but I’ve but that out there before.”
“I think if we are able to do a little bit more…look at what we’ve been able to do with the little that we have, so if we are able to do a little bit more with additional help from Corporate BVI, and I’m not going to point to anyone or any names or anything like that, but if we can get some more sponsorship to help these athletes get the nutrition advice that they should be getting and the therapy that they should be getting an everything that goes along with putting an athlete on the podium, then we can get things like that happening. We’re not far,” President Augustine explained.
Government working to support sporting organisations
Meanwhile, Minister responsible for Sport Dr. Natalio Wheatley said his government has been working diligently behind the scenes to establish more mechanisms to help with the development of sports in the territory.
He said there are plans to pump resources into some of the already established programmes as well as some plans to establish legal framework to assist with the management of resources for sports in the BVI.
“I’m grateful to the Olympic Committee for helping us with the consultant Mr Keith Joseph, who is able to review a Sports Management Council legislation that we’re going to bring to the House of Assembly, that will bring a greater level of structure and support in terms of the government support of the many associations and the many sporting activities that we have here,” Dr. Wheatley stated.
He added, “Also, as opposed to us seeking to work outside of these organisations who are tasked with the responsibilities with working with these various organisations, we have to support them better.”
The sport minister said his government will be feeding into programmes such as the Elite Athlete Programme by the Olympic Committee and the Long-Term Development of Athletes Programme which is a joint collaborative between the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education.