Four representing Trinidad and Tobago in Beijing at Summer Olympian

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Four representing Trinidad and Tobago in Beijing

Posted April 17, 2008 at 09:04 AM by Os Davis

Section: Beijing 2008, Culture/History, Olympic History, Events, Soccer, Track & Field, Other, Featured Writers, Os Davis

Trinidad and Tobago flag

When the Beijing Games are played out, folks from Trinidad and Tobago will be taking great pride in three individuals who literally have no chance at winning medals.

Shane De Silva, Cindy Mohammed and Linda Bramble will get the chance to represent their nation in high-profile fashion at the Games, however, as FIFA announced last Friday that the three will serve as a refereeing team for the women’s soccer competition.

De Silva will head up the team, and her appearance in the Olympics now makes the Women’s World Cup the only major international women’s soccer event she has not refereed. And the lady has quite an impressive résumé off the pitch as well. De Silva actually broke into the West Indies women’s cricket team at the age of 31 and played in test matches over the next four years as a left-handed bowler and batsman. In a third vocation, De Silva works as a special-education teacher.

All told, Trinidad and Tobago athletes have brought home 12 medals, all in athletics, weightlifting and swimming. Three-time competitor Rodney Wilkes took the Caribbean nation’s first-ever medal by taking silver in 62kg weightlifting event in 1948. The sole gold claimed by Trinidad and Tobago was by Hasley Crawford, who took the 100 meters in the Montreal Games of 1976.

The country’s all-time medals leader and perhaps greatest athlete of the century is Ato Boldon with four earned in the 1992, 1996, and 2000 games. Boldon surely became one of the youngest folks to ever have an arena named for him when Ato Boldon Stadium was constructed for the 2001 U-17 World Cup while the young man was all of 24 years of age.

Boldon will be in Beijing representing Trinidad and Tobago as well, but as part of NBC’s reporting team for American broadcast.

(Incidentally, be sure to check out Boldon’s superslick, ultra-multimedia website which proudly proclaims the speedster to have been “Drug free since 1973!”)