FIRST WORD: Need to pump fresh life into bodybuilding

THERE WERE HARD LESSONS to be learnt in every sense from the recent Central American & Caribbean (CAC) bodybuilding championships.

Let us do a reality check. No one needs to be reminded there are some scars from Jamaica that will not heal and that we will have to take the bitter with the sweet.

However small, the margin of defeat (four points) doesn't make the loss of the coveted team title any less painful to bear. A miss is as good as a mile.

Could we have done better? Did we have a full team and if so why not? Was there a need for five officials – men's bodybuilding coach, assistant coach, fitness coach, chief delegate and manager?

In these days of limited funds, why did we have a manager and a delegate? Could the manager not fulfil both roles? What was the justification in having an assistant coach?

The big picture is, bodybuilding is very much at the crossroads and cries out for an infusion of new ideas. Recapturing the team title will not nearly address the dilemma the sport faces.

Now, more than ever, the image of the sport so badly tattered in recent times, requires a facelift. Bodybuilders must once again market themselves as wholesome, positive role models and community leaders, nurtured and guided by a federation that must now understand that transparency and not trips must be the watchword.

Taking an out-of-depth team to the world championships is not the answer. Unearthing young talent and reviving the interest in women's bodybuilding is.

We somehow need to win back the hearts and pockets of the corporate sector and as former world-class amateur Loftus Roach has put it, introduce more contests in which the lion's share of the proceeds will go to the bodybuilders. Nutritional supplements are expensive and incentives must be introduced to defray the costs.

The sport badly needs an injection of new blood to take it forward. For the first time in the history of the sport, we had a nationals without a single heavyweight and a 47-year-old light heavyweight. So we went to CAC embarrassingly without a heavyweight, a class that we dominated the previous two years by way of Carmichael Bryan and Jerry Nicholls.

That must not happen again. We must have a development programme to revive interest in a bold and creative way.