 The years of commemorating the sporting heroes of Trinidad and Tobago, from Roger Gibbon in 1962 to Jareem Richards, watch the first citizen's 2023 Sports Awards and Hall of Fame induction 2024 live on Saturday at 7.30pm in the eastern Caribbean, 6.30pm Jamaica on Sportsmax and CNTV. Your sports destination, get the Sportsmax app now. All right, well thank you so much for staying with us on this Friday edition of the Sportsmax Zone. This segment is sponsored by First Citizens Bank. Well, it's heightened anticipation for the sporting fraternity in Trinidad and Tobago as the Twin Island Republic prepares itself for the First Citizens Sports Foundation's 2023 Sports Awards gala on March 16 at the lovely Hyde Regency in Port of Spain. The prestigious event will honour the outstanding achievements of over 100 athletes who have demonstrated unparalleled skill, dedication and sportsmanship across various disciplines. Also scheduled to take place at this year's event will be the induction of awardees into the Sports Hall of Fame for 2024. Well joining the show now on behalf of the First Citizens Sports Foundation is Mark Mungal. Good afternoon. Good afternoon and thanks for having me on the show this afternoon. Not a problem. So I'm really excited about this Sports Awards and my first question to you will just tell us a bit about the background of this awards and why First Citizens Bank feel that it's so important to of course recognize and award the achievements of the top Trinidad and Tobago sportsmen and women. Yeah, well this foundation as you probably know has been around for since since our independence started as a gift back in 1962 and since then we've been honouring sportsmen and sportswomen and youths, youths, sportsmen and women as well over the years and for us it's important that that we focus not just on a popularity type event but one that recognizes excellence so makes it quite challenging for us because excellence is not something that's easily assessed particularly when we are assessing among different sporting disciplines and sub-disciplines as well but our commitment has been and continues to be ensuring that we use the opportunity to show appreciation for those amazing athletes who've continued to pound the concrete to really work hard in their different disciplines to continue to be to persevere and to represent the right red, white and black and so this is an opportunity for us to show the appreciation to those athletes and not only those who would have made it to podium but those who would have been successful at an international level you know some of those who maybe let's say just just in the top eight or even in the top four and you think about that you don't meddle it when you get fourth place but to be at the top four in your discipline globally is quite significant and sometimes our athletes don't feel that they're appreciated well this is an opportunity to let them know that we do appreciate them and so this these awards brings together those outstanding athletes from across all of those over 30 disciplines to show them that we do appreciate them we do value them do we do recognize their commitment to to fly in the red white and black in the sport sector yeah and you just said in your opening remark that you know it's not a popularity contest of course it's just to show appreciation to these hardworking athletes but i'm looking at the nominations and for me it must be quite a difficult job having to select so what does it really come down to yeah it is challenging and and we've maintained a kind of commitment to process we've stayed with this for for many years and and and that that involves first of all actually recognizing and valuing the national sporting organizations so we allow the national sporting organizations to submit their nominations so we don't select the nominee the nominees the national sporting organizations the ones who govern the sport and who work with the athletes and support them on the journeys they're the ones who actually know submit the nomination but then we the awards committee we go through a really extensive process and that starts with reviewing all of the nominations that come in we use a rubric as a guide i always emphasize with my colleagues on the foundation that that rubric is a guide and the rubric essentially looks at the performances across different levels so if you if you are a medal at an international event and at olympic event for example or world championship would obviously be be a higher value than something at a regional level and at a national level but even across all of that there are so many nuances within the context of those events so we it demands that we then do a proper review of each of those events to make sure that something that's presented as an international event for example you'd have a let's say world karate tournament somewhere in the world when we do check that sometimes it's predominantly let's say a us or whichever is the host country but just a few other international participants does not have the same value as again referencing an olympic games so that's important for us to check and obviously all of the the participants have to be national so that's important as well and and then that demonstration of their outstanding performance across all of those levels we're looking for exceptional performances as well so even though we recognize all of the nominees the ones who move up to the top 10 and then eventually the winners have to really have exceptional performances at those levels and of course the results also have to be verifiable so if an athlete says look i i i had a did a hundred meter dash in nine seven eight down at mani ramshan stadium but nobody was there well then that doesn't count obviously right so all of the results also have to be verifiable and remember we take into consideration some of our athletes are foreign based playing professional sport in other countries and and if they are nominated we also have to verify the information that's coming to us that's part of our responsibility to do the due diligence to make sure that when we say we recognize an excellence the excellence is in fact verifiable and just just to note of course even though we're in march of 2024 these are we are actually reviewing the performances for all of 2023 so we always do our awards after the year is completed and we have enough time to do the review of all of the performances so the the achievements that we're looking at are only from between january and december of the year on the review which is 2023 right and when will the top 10 be named and another question because i find this happens so often sometimes the people judging competitions like this are not very versed in sports so they don't have like a wide range of sports acknowledge is there somebody like that on your team as well yeah so actually this this foundation is made up of a wide range of sports personalities maybe that's not good with sport administrators maybe yeah that has always included a good representation a broad representation of the sport sector in the country so and we do have representation from past athletes we've actually lucky to have all of the years that we've existed have had representation from past outstanding athletes olympians and so on but also administrators who are some of them still serving in the international on the national olympic committee for example but who have had experience within the sector but it's more than that to me because one of the challenges obviously with selecting the best in a group of all of the sports is an appreciation that you're not biased and that you do you have a level of integrity and respect and that's one of the things that we've the institution the sports foundation has benefited from over the years that it's been respected as an organization that's not biased not involved in the back canal of sport and and the persons who serve are well respected and and recognized for doing something that is genuinely intended to show that we appreciate and value or best performance regardless of our affiliations in the past or otherwise and so that that helps as well so having a wide range of personalities and on the on the foundation who serve including I think first and for me in particular one of the most valuable persons on the on that foundation when it comes to the awards because the awards are not the only things that we do but when it comes to the awards our journalists we in in the early days of this foundation it was there were a lot of journalists who involved in and we still continue to maintain that tradition so we have Kwame Kwame Lawrence who's on board with us and he's the one who this is his job so he's involved and understands and tracks and can give details of all of that but again we have members who are also themselves olympians and sport administrators in their own right so we're not disconnected in any way from the the sport sector at all yeah mark I want to ask you a quick question before you go because I know the Trinidad Tobago Olympic committee has a major annual awards function that they put on as well in December of every year and Nicholas Paul and Michelle Leah you were the winners for the 2023 TTOC athletes of the year they're both nominated for your award as well can you just quickly say if there is a difference if the criteria is different in any way from the TTOC awards from the first citizens I know that the TTOC is basically rewarding olympic sports and I know that like cricket hasn't been an olympic sport for some time and I see we're like Darren Bravo and Karishma Ramarak are among your nominees for your awards so maybe your first citizens award embraces more sporting platforms than the TTOC does I'm I'm not sure could you say yeah a bit of that and and and as you say the the olympic movement was primarily started their awards primarily to focus on the olympic sport for me to be honest with you and there was a year or two that even the Ministry of Sport was doing their awards that was similar in terms of recognizing athletes but the foundation as the the institution that started this way back in 62 as far as well established as the as the go-to for for these awards and there's no computation here I think it's it's good that we have athletes being valued and respected and appreciated and if in fact plenty of many of our national sporting organizations are also hosting their awards so that we think that's a healthy thing we do know that our process is different as I mentioned so the the process that the the national olympic committee uses is different and everybody knows that this event is a little bit more upscale it's a bit more of a gala and and and I think because of the years that we've existed and the persons who've been recognized but also because of the other dimensions that we've added I think it is kind of the premier sports awards in the country for some years now and there's no there's no element of competition as I mentioned we do even have members of the olympic executive serving on the foundation as well as and we've always had so yeah there's those parallel things happen for me if I had to to make a choice I would say less limited resources and collaborate but as it stands now you know it's it's fair enough that other organizations want to also do their own recognition which is okay and and we support that as well all right mark well I want to thank you so much keep up the great work you and your team the entire first citizen sports foundation and I'm very eager to see who gets this award because I have a personal favorite also have a good evening thank you yeah okay and thanks a lot for supporting the event as well all right take care all right we're going to take a quick break and come back we have a lot more sports to talk here on the sports max soon