Roberts recounts Olympic highs and lows

Barbadian Olympian Stevon Roberts is the type of individual you don’t tell he cannot achieve something. He will surely prove you wrong.

In fact, when Roberts dropped volleyball and competed in track and field as a fifth form student at Combermere in 1989, he was discouraged not to run, and told he was not good enough.

But those words just helped to ignite a passion within Roberts who was determined to prove his critics wrong and that he did by establishing his place on the Barbados team where he competed at the 1992 Barcelona Summer Olympics.

One of the most outstanding quarter milers Barbados has produced, Roberts who was age 21 at the time, ran the 800m and 4x400m relay for his country at the Olympics.

Now 49-years-old, Roberts recalled that the Barcelona Olympics held 28-years ago was like no other having gotten the opportunity to meet basketball legend Michael Jordan.

“It was amazing, it was like no other because number one the Olympic village is a world on its own. Imagine having everything in a country in one village, you got a hospital, every fancy restaurant you could think about, you got all the fancy facilities for training you would normally see at your University. Then you have access to doctors of all types, sometimes I think it is a waste of time for a team to take a doctor because you have access to free doctors.

“But it is an amazing experience and if you are a sports fan like I am, think of all the people you get to meet. I got to meet Michael Jordan, who was always one of my fans and a fraternity brother (Omega Psi Phi which is one of the black fraternities in America).

So when you are a brother, no matter where you went to school, when you meet another brother he treats you like if you are family. So, whereas other people would have been freaking out to get close to Michael Jordan, Michael Jordan would have been coming close to me because of our association. All of those are things I got to experience at the Olympics,” he said.

Roberts had the distinction of holding the Barbados 800m junior record (1:52.30) for over 20 years until one of Ellerslie Secondary School finest quarter milers Anthonio Mascoll burst on to the scene and broke it in a time of 1:48.36.

After emerging on the athletics scene in 1989 as a schoolboy, Roberts gained an athletic scholarship to Murray State University where he is now a Hall of Famer along with fellow Barbadian Olympian Seibert Straughn.

Prior to athletics, Roberts played first division volleyball for Deacons Club and was even called to trials for Barbados but never played because his focus had shifted to athletics.

What made him decide to make the switch from volleyball and turn his attention to the track and field? He said: “I started running out of the fact that the games master at Combermere at the time, Harcourt Wason, encouraged me to basically join the school team after my performance at inter-house sports. So, I just gave it a go and then I met a really lovely gentleman who is now deceased, Lord bless his soul, Mr St. Clair Cox who was the coach at Dover athletic team and when he saw me running he said ‘I will make you a champion’. I actually believed in him and that is how I actually started concentrating on athletics. And then too the fact I was going to get a free education was also a boost.”

In addition, Roberts explained that his former teammates of what was one of Barbados’ best quarter-mile relay teams, Terry ‘Grover’ Harewood, Wade Payne and Ronald Thorne (Olympian now deceased) are the ones who pushed him to take athletics seriously.

“Back then you used to have these track meets on Saturdays called school league meets. And I started running at these school league meets the same year I started running and they told me this is not volleyball, you need to go back and play volleyball, you are not going to win anything out here. I am the kind of person you don’t tell that, you can’t tell me I can’t achieve something. That drives me.

“When they were training on evenings at the Stadium, I was training evenings at the Stadium and mornings on the beach. So, in less than a year, I became Barbados top half-miler, senior and junior, plus equal to the top quarter-miler as well because Seibert Straughn was number one,” he explained.

However, his time in athletics was short-lived for a mere four years (1989-1992) as he never ran competitively again after representing Barbados at the Barcelona Olympics.

Born and raised in Black Rock, Roberts is a man who believes that we should learn from the negative as much as we embrace the positive. He noted the 1992 Olympics left him feeling disappointed.

“We had come home almost at a peak after competing every single weekend at University. But I don’t know if it was financial constraints but we had to train on Harrison College grass track before going to the Olympics because the national stadium would have been closed for Crop Over. I was so disappointed that I got to the Olympics not in any shape because I had lost all of my form. You can’t train on the grass to go run on a track and then when you are going to the Olympics, you want to have been competing week in, week out, leading up to the Olympics and after the Barbados trials, we didn’t have another competition before the Olympics.

‘We sat down for about almost six weeks waiting to go to the Olympics while training on the grass. I must admit none of us was in shape for the Olympics. It was very disappointing and quite sad to say we didn’t even have Barbados gear. And nobody don’t talk about the negatives but you got to talk about the negatives to make people understand why every single man on the team quit after the Olympic Games. At the Olympics, we ran in green pants and white shirts because we never had any gear. The entourage waited until they got to Barcelona to look for gear and by the time they went to look, they never got anything blue and yellow or nothing close.

“It shouldn’t be that anyway, the Olympics is one of the biggest meets of your life and we should have been leaving Barbados with gear. So, I never ran again and that, unfortunately, was a horrible ending because honestly, I don’t think I found out what was my true ability in athletics because of the lack of support we get in Barbados. But I am still happy with what I achieved in the small space of time, “ Roberts said.

While at Murray State University, Roberts earned his degree in finance, economics and accounts. He absolutely enjoys dealing with numbers and after graduating and returning to Barbados in 1993 from University, he worked at Arawak cement plant for a year. Then he transferred to Coopers and Lybrand which is known today as PriceWaterhouseCoopers where he also worked.

As he continued to fulfil his educational ambitions, Roberts departed Barbados for England where he earned his Association of Chartered Accountants qualification and also worked for Ernst and Young.

Today he wears several professional hats. Roberts does financial consultancy for businesses in the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe. A business owner, he also has a local transportation business as well as a small construction company.

The proud father of two, one of whom is a Barbadian scholar and former junior national volleyball captain (Ashley Roberts), believes that hard work pays off. He advised young upcoming athletes to have a plan and study what they love.

“One, all of them cannot become professional athletes, so you need to have a balance where you also think about a possible career which would include becoming educated. Gain a proper education because as an athlete you can get injured, things can happen and like I said everybody cannot become a professional athlete, so you need something to fall back on.

“Also, prior to going to whatever school if you do get a scholarship, it would be nice to sit and speak with people like myself, Ms Freida Nicholls, Seibert Straughn, people who have been through it to know what to look forward to. Over the years there have had several athletes that I have followed that went up and didn’t last more than a year and that is because they fell short of what the expectations were of them. I think it has to do with a lack of knowledge and lack of preparation. And to an extent I blame the association for that because we need to put something in place to prepare these athletes for what they are going to encounter, “ he explained.

Roberts is calling on local authorities to make financial investments and put the athletes first.

Clearly not satisfied with what he is seeing from Barbadian athletes with the exception of 400m runner Jonathan Jones, Roberts is hoping for some form of improvement going forward.

“I have seen so many times where teams have been leaving Barbados and they got as much entourage as athletes. So, if they would put the athletes first where they take less entourage and carry other athletes even if it is only for the experience. And I think we should start working with the athletes from a young age. Don’t wait until they get old, then perform well to say we are going to try and work on a scholarship for them because by that time sometimes they get lost in society. They might have the talent but not the mindset to be able to handle the US (United States) atmosphere. They will fall short, they will not be productive, “ Roberts stated.

He added: “Barbados has been for too long an academic society and lacking that investment in sports. Everybody can’t be an academic, so if you could get twenty out of a hundred children in Barbados on a track scholarship, that would make a massive difference to this economy.”

morissalindsay@barbadostoday.bb