KEYNOTE Speaker at last Saturday’s National Sports Council’s National Sports Awards, entrepreneur and former St. Vincent and the Grenadines batsman Ormiston “Ken” Boyea, wants to see greater recognition given to retired sportsmen and women.{{more}}

Boyea, speaking on the theme “Let Excellence be your goal”, sees the setting up of a pension plan for those who have served as a method of promoting better performances in sports, among this country’s athletes.

“Sports is becoming one of the biggest businesses in the world, and we have to look after our sports people. We have to do different things to make them happy. First, we have to make them happy,” the keynote Speaker advocated.

Drawing on his personal business practices, Boyea asked rhetorically “Why shouldn’t a sportsman retire on a pension plan?”

“Why have we allowed this to happen?” Boyea further questioned.

Contending that not many former sportspersons have been treated with much tangible homage, Boyea said: “We have never made them feel good for the dogged hard work they have done for us.”

“Why have we allowed sportsmen, when they have finished, to go down?” he inquired.

This lack of recognition, Boyea opined, was impacting on present day participation.

“How can we get young people into sports, when they see others who have served walk the streets not knowing where their next meal is coming from?” Boyea asked.

Boyea, in making reference to many years ago when the legendary Barbados and West Indies cricketer Sir Garfield Sobers wanted to purchase a house in the area of then Aqueduct Golf Course in the Buccament Valley, said that it should have been given to him.

Boyea sees Sobers as being more recognised than all Caribbean politicians “past and present”.

He referred to our own Michael Findlay, whose integrity in his playing days for the West Indies, as a model who promotes St. Vincent and the Grenadines, as being a land of “honest people”.

Boyea punctuated his address with the common thread that “excellence is in fact a journey, not a destination”. (RT)