The Barbados Olympic Association (BOA) has announced the selection of 11 rising young Barbadian athletes for the second iteration of its elite Youth Project Podium initiative, launched this week at the BOA’s headquarters with funding backing from two major supporters. This targeted development program is built to nurture emerging athletic talent throughout the current Olympic cycle, with the long-term goal of preparing competitors to compete and excel at top-tier international events, ranging from the Youth Olympics and Junior Pan Am Games all the way to the senior Olympic and Pan Am Games.
The selected athletes, who range in age from 16 to 23, represent a diverse set of Olympic sports: Deann Walton competes in judo, Savannah Stuart in sailing, Lenna Hamati in squash, four athletes — Victor Ashby, Amiya Harrison, Jaiya Simmons, and Mihael Sobers — come from swimming, and five competitors round out the cohort in triathlon: Matthew Briggs-Legall, Alexis Lashley, Laila McIntyre, and Zindzele Renwick-Williams. Funding for the 2024 cohort is made possible through grant support from the Amarone Charitable Trust and Panam Sport, enabling the program to deliver comprehensive support beyond just competitive training.
BOA Secretary General Erskine Simmons framed the program as a key continuation of the association’s ongoing investment in the future of Barbadian sport. “Our first Youth Project Podium taught us a great deal about the unique needs of developing athletes and the importance of supporting them beyond just competition results,” Simmons explained. “We have taken those lessons and used them to strengthen this second edition. This year we welcome a smaller cohort which represents a more focused approach to athlete development, with each athlete identified as having clear potential to progress along the BOA’s performance pathway.”
Kendia Brathwaite, BOA Senior Operations Officer and lead for the Youth Project Podium, outlined the rigorous multi-stage selection process the organization used to pick this year’s participants. “We reached out to all our national sport federations and distributed a structured questionnaire to guide them in putting forward their most promising athletes,” Brathwaite said. “On top of that, we also used competitive results from recent editions of the Youth Commonwealth Games and Youth Olympics as a performance benchmark to evaluate all nominated candidates.”
Unlike many athlete development programs that focus solely on physical training, Youth Project Podium takes a holistic approach to supporting young competitors. Brathwaite detailed the full range of resources available to selected athletes, covering both athletic and personal growth: access to specialized sports medicine doctors, nutrition guidance, physical therapy support, mental skills coaching, podiatry care, personal branding training, and communications development.
The program’s core mission, Brathwaite explained, is to identify and nurture junior talent early in their careers, laying a structured pathway for them to advance to higher levels of competitive performance and achieve long-term success. “We of course, at the Olympic Association, would love to win medals at the junior level. These athletes selected for this cohort have the potential to go on to represent Barbados at the Youth Olympic Games later this year, the Youth Commonwealth Games next year, and then the Junior Pan Am Games after that,” she said, adding that the second cohort is part of a broader BOA push to strengthen junior athlete pipelines across all national federations.
David Csumrik, a trustee with funding partner Amarone Charitable Trust, expressed his organization’s pride in partnering with the BOA on the initiative. “We feel the first edition was very successful and I am sure the second edition will be successful,” Csumrik said. “I am hoping the athletes have fun and enjoy the experience. Work hard but remember sport is supposed to be fun. Make us all proud.”