The sport industry is estimated to be valued at US$500-600 billion, taking into account sport events, media coverage, sport tourism, merchandising and all other activities related to sports.

The Caribbean has been a major contributor to this, with its worldclass athletes displaying their talent worldwide. But only a minute amount of this value comes back to the region and even less towards the welfare or development of athletes.

Over the last four decades, sport has advanced commercially and scientifically. For Australia, who failed to win a medal in the 1976 Olympics, it was a national crisis prompting the formation of the Australian Institute of Sport, now one of the foremost sporting institutes in the world. Other sporting countries followed suit, integrating Science and Medicine into Sports to create fully optimised and sustainable athletes.

Whereas some countries or athletes achieved their goals through illicit means, most relied on research that was within ethical and acceptable limits. Major teams came on board, setting up their own academies so that the top club teams in just about every sport have full support from sport scientists and medics dedicated to keeping the best players on the field for as long as possible and ensuring that they are constantly performing at their best.

What was not accidental is that almost all High-Performance Centres (HPC) and Academies are based either within universities or are closely linked to them. Loughborough University in the United Kingdom, for example, is not only a top sport university but has a close partnership with the English Institute of Sport. The HPC of the English Cricket Board is housed in Loughborough University.

Likewise, Cricket South Africa’s HPC is in the University of Pretoria.

Similar examples abound all over the world. This symbiotic relationship not only enhances sport through dedicated research and interventions but affords athletes an environment to sharpen their athletic and academic skills.

It also provides the stage for those academics who are interested in sport to deploy their theories and inventions towards the improvement of emerging athletes.

The HPC, therefore, has input from coaches and their support staff, as well as from sport physiologists, sports psychologists, sport nutritionists, bio-mechanists, engineers, etc. This is coupled with members of the Sports Medicine team who are charged with the task of preventing injury or facilitating the speedy return from existing injuries. All are attempting to shave that hundredth of a second from a sprinter, swimmer, or cyclist. They are trying to get tennis players or cricketers to perform with the same intensity day after day or basketballers and netballers to shoot with increased accuracy.

Increasingly, what is clear is that success on the field of play is closely linked to the support off the field.

Given our population, talent in the Caribbean supersedes any other region. But many of our athletes do not get exposure to the level of intervention provided by HPC at the local level. Most of them have had to look outside of the region for such interventions. The University of the West Indies’ Faculty of Sport has the responsibility to provide these services to the region. This we plan to do through the education of the prerequisite specialists and the development of its own facilities.

The University of the West Indies is well-positioned to achieve this because of its regional mandate and its international reach. Working alongside top researchers and practitioners, the UWI has access to some of the top High Performance Centres in the World.

Setting up HPCs require significant investment from governments and the private sector. The massive subvention to the English Institute of Sport from the National Lottery, or to the Australian Institute of Sport from its government (and likewise by the state governments in Australia), and, similarly, every country of North America and across Europe and Asia, recognises that coupling HPC and university are two sides of a triangle. The financial investment is the side that is often hardest to fill.

Whereas UWI has set the ball rolling with the Faculty of Sport, it will require support from regional governments and sporting bodies to create the sort of HPC that is required for a region with our calibre of athletes.

Duplicating efforts is a waste of resources. Setting up standalone academies is usually unsustainable.

The tried and tested formula is that of a coordinated, cooperative, comprehensive and congenial approach incorporating all sides of the triangle.

This has been the way in just about all countries, developed or developing. We need a regional approach to HPCs, as sport is one of the major avenues through which our people can progress. But the playfield is becoming increasingly unlevel, with the haves pulling away with science and medicine. Many argue that science and medicine were employed to beat the all-conquering West Indies cricket team, and by ignoring them we have struggled at the bottom ever since. Time for those with the expertise, political will and funding to get together and set up a facility commensurate to the level of athletes we produce.

Dr Akshai Mansingh is Dean, Faculty of Sport, University of the West Indies. He can be reached at akshai.mansingh@uwimona.edu.jm