Bonkowsky alone at Pan Am, as Mohammed faces $$ woes » EntornoInteligente

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Nicholas Bonkowsky, the Cana­di­an-born T&T bad­minton ace will be the lone T&T play­er at next week’s XXV Pan Amer­i­can In­di­vid­ual Bad­minton Cham­pi­onships in El Sal­vador.

Bonkowsky, the coun­try’s top-ranked in­ter­na­tion­al play­er at 946th, was set to be joined by Naim Mo­hammed, an­oth­er T&T bad­minton ace who plays pro­fes­sion­al­ly in Den­mark, but fund­ing was a ma­jor is­sue for the Ikast SS Bad­minton Club play­er and he had to pull out at the very last mo­ment.

Mo­hammed has been ac­tive and ready to wear the red, white and black for T&T, telling Guardian Me­dia Sports yes­ter­day: «I can’t pay for it my­self and I sought some fund­ing in T&T but there was no suc­cess in that. To trav­el to Eu­rope to that part of the world is quite ex­pen­sive.

«I couldn’t get a spon­sor good enough to pay for my flight. I had my ac­com­mo­da­tion and every­thing cov­ered but just get­ting there was cost­ing me a lot, so I pulled out last minute.

«I pulled out the day be­fore the draw but I wait­ed to see what would have hap­pened but there was no hope. It is sad though be­cause I was re­al­ly look­ing for­ward to play.»

The Pan Am tour­na­ment, sched­uled for April 26-29 at the Pala­cio Na­cional de los De­portes Car­los ‘El Famoso’ Her­nan­dez will be the first form of in­ter­na­tion­al play for the T&T play­ers in more than three years.

Both Bonkowsky and Mo­hammed last rep­re­sent­ed T&T at the Com­mon­wealth Games in 2018 at the Car­rara Sports and Leisure Cen­tre on the Gold Coast, Aus­tralia as a dou­bles team. The de­fend­ing gold medal­lists at that time were the pair of Chris Ad­cock and Gab­by Ad­cock of Eng­land.

Apart from that, Bonkows­ki, a reg­u­lar on the in­ter­na­tion­al cir­cuit, al­so rep­re­sent­ed T&T at the Pan Am Games in 2015 in Toron­to, Cana­da which served as an Olympic qual­i­fi­er, and at the CARE­BA­CO Games in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic that year.

The Cana­di­an-born could not be con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Mo­hammed lament­ed the con­fus­ing po­si­tion of the sport lo­cal­ly, say­ing: «I haven’t re­al­ly heard from the bad­minton as­so­ci­a­tion re­gard­ing fund­ing or any kind of as­sis­tance for play­ers. Right now, I am not re­al­ly sure if there is an as­so­ci­a­tion be­cause there’s so much talk go­ing around that there isn’t one right now and there’s go­ing to be an elec­tion soon, so I don’t know who to ask, who to talk too.

«Some­times I feel a bit lost be­cause I’m al­most play­ing blind.

«I am well sea­soned and I’m ready to play but I have not been able to get fund­ing to play be­cause it is hard to fund my­self. I can fund cer­tain things as a pro­fes­sion­al ath­lete but I can’t fund every­thing and I haven’t got­ten fund­ing from Trinidad for a while now.

«And even the last fund­ing I got didn’t cov­er much, it on­ly cov­ered three or four months of rent so af­ter that, I had to find dif­fer­ent sources of in­come here in Den­mark so I’ve just been fend­ing for my­self since.

«The fu­ture doesn’t seem bright though, be­cause you don’t hear from the as­so­ci­a­tion or any­thing.»

Mean­while, Bonkowsky will be ac­com­pa­nied at the tour­na­ment by com­pa­tri­ot PJ Williams who will be a ref­er­ee.

LINK ORIGINAL: The Trinidad Guardian

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