The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune

As A former 1976 Olympian representing the Bahamas in the triple jump, I am particularly proud of our ability to execute a world-class event such as the 2014 IAAF World Relays. The Bahamian organisations involved, the Local Organising Committee (LOC) and the Ministry of Youth, Sports and Culture, deserve the kudos received from around the world.

Our desire to host this event in 2015 and, potentially, other world-class events is one that we must take seriously. To achieve excellence, we should not be satisfied with just knowing we have the competency to execute such an event, but now turn our focus on the promised outcomes and improvements.

One area of assessment and reporting back to the nation should be how well we met the objectives and goals established during the planning of the inaugural IAAF World Relays. We identified a number of fiscal and social outcomes to the Bahamian people from this event. It is the LOC’s responsibility to identify:

• What returns on our investment did we realise?

• Did we meet the budget presented to the Ministry of Youth, Sports and Culture (Bahamas Government) and to the IAAF?

• What impact did this event have – and continues to have – on our main industry, tourism?

• What progress have we made in branding ourselves as the number one sports tourism destination in this hemisphere?

• What impact did our culture have on the event?

• What did we learn that can be applied to other events, sporting and non-sporting?

To many of us, the event was a great success, showing leadership from all organisations involved. To ensure that we can replicate the effort and even exceed expectations in the future we should leverage the knowledge gained by our outstanding resources.

One way to accomplish this is by conducting a “lessons learned” study involving key representatives from all organisations. This study should provide us with innovative ideas for planning and executing future world-class events.

Some key questions to be addressed are:

• What aspects of the event did the World Relays team perform well?

• What things should we avoid doing in the future?

• What areas do we feel could be done differently?

We have the capabilities and competencies to provide continual world-class events in the future. Let’s take our leadership position in the region and the world. Again, congratulations Bahamas.

PHIL ROBINS

Nassau,

June 1, 2014.