By Treiston Joseph
Lyndon Wilson, coach of 2012 Olympian Winston George, recently benefited from a high-performance coaching programme that concluded on August 30 in Brazil. Upon his return, he sat with Guyana Times International Sport in an exclusive interview to discuss what he learned during the programme.
TJ: What was the coaching programme about?
LW: It was a forum for high-performance sports in Rio de Janeiro; it was from the 26th to the 30th of August and basically the forum was more or less to train athletes for high-performance competitions. The way in which we train athletes for high-performances is more or less the scientific way; if an athlete has the potential they go through a process to see if they can last two years, three years, ten years, and there were special doctors, physicians and even coaches who were present for discussions on high-performance for athletes.
TJ: What was the main concept you grasped from the course?
LW: I grasped so much and to implement the things that I have gathered from the forum. I wouldn’t want to say that it would be a difficult task because they also taught us how to supplement, but one of the things that I would like to see is all of the sports entities coming together for one common goal. We cannot talk about 2016 (Olympics) and think about getting a medal; we cannot talk about the next World Cup football (2014) and thinking our team can be there, we have to come together for one common goal.
TJ: In you estimation what should be that one common goal?
LW: Our first common goal should be preparing athletes to compete and not to participate. When I say participate, it’s because the two words vary. Participate is just sending people to show that we have people at the Olympics but to compete is to triumph at the highest level and that should be our first common goal.
TJ: How can Guyana achieve this common goal?
LW: We can achieve that common goal with all the sporting entities coming together, including the ministries of education, sport, culture; sport has gone so far into culture that those two entities are one, the GOA (Guyana Olympic Association), the athletics association, the football fraternity; everybody needs to come together.
TJ: Getting back to the scientific approach, how well do you think it will fit into the Guyanese culture?
LW: It can! There were countries there without centres but they are still doing high-performance training. We have trained people, we have a lot of doctors from Cuba and while they are working at the government hospital, I think these people can come together once you identify people with the talent. They can help the coaches with training these athletes; they know nutrition and nutrition plays a big part in sports development. As a matter of fact, seventy percent of all the development is through nutrition, so we can’t get 50 people living in 50 different directions and want them to develop at the same rate.
TJ: Factoring such a scientific approach to sport in general, how do we incorporate the cost factor for athletes to have such a programme?
LW: From the GOA perspective, there are some mini-scholarships that have been given out to athletes and there are some solidarity scholarships from the GOA.
TJ: With this newfound knowledge how do you plan to share it with other coaches, athletes and sporting disciplines?
LW: Well I’m looking to submit my report by tomorrow and I want to have a meeting with the council (from GOA) and then we will move from there. I already have some athletes in mind; I also want to talk with some of the coaches first but with regard to the different sporting disciplines, I’m open to anyone who wants advice because we also had some discussion on how to improve team sport. The coach for the Brazil national football team (Luiz Felipe Scolari) was there; he didn’t give away anything but he had a talk with us on how to approach independent men and that is allowing them to realise the main goal of the team.
Meanwhile, with Wilson having such knowledge it is imperative that Guyana utilise such expertise to benefit sport in an effort towards the 2016 Olympics in Brazil.
