All eyes have been on you for the whole week. Ten full days of extreme pressure and boundless stress. Now, exhale!

Some of you had the opportunity to taste the fantastic drink of victory. As a country, we cheered as you made us proud. We know the price you paid to fly our flag high: years of blood, sweat and at times tears and we are in your debt.

To those of you who tried, hold your head high! It is legitimate to always aim for victory but even the best face losses. You fought gallantly until the end. Acknowledge your success for your half-tasted victory. Someone once said, “The better you get at losing, the closer you get to winning.” I strongly believe in that.

As a country, we showed you the best and the worst we are capable of. I hope you will learn from both as we all have. We cheered from the sidelines as one people, showing that we CAN be one nation. We saw you as Mauritian athletes fighting for our colours, not as individuals belonging to a particular religion, community or social class. And we derived exactly the same pride from your victory no matter who you are.

We put up a great, almost flawless show for the opening of the games, giving you what you deserve. Unfortunately, we have also displayed the worst type of amateurism (the ticket saga, contaminated food, delays, seating arrangement cacophony…) and petty politics. The torch relay was not the high water mark of our sports history. A symbolic exercise that should have remained between yourselves took on a political dimension, with a large dose of nepotism. We saw a whole partisan delegation going to Reunion – including Minister of Sports Stephan Toussaint and his son! – to fetch the torch. Then all the cronies lined up to take selfies. We were under the impression that the whole country belongs to one political party. In the end, these newly-discovered sports aficionados took the plane to Rodrigues, leaving the torch behind! Cronyism even invaded the presidential lodge, where a notorious bandit was seen sitting with the prime minister, while other personalities were left to dodge the rain. Ego, politics and cronyism are so incompatible with the values of sports!

“We saw you as Mauritian athletes fighting for our colours, not as individuals belonging to a particular religion, community or social class. And we derived exactly the same pride from your victory no matter who you are.” 

As for the state of the George V football stadium, we can only apologise to those of you who played football in puddles of mud on a pitch – supposedly rehabilitated at the cost of Rs100 million! – in front of a scant audience sitting on wet and dreary chairs. Had we been in a better mood, we would have suggested that the stadium is meant to double up as a swimming pool or a rice paddy field but the joke would have been on us. That is the cost of opacity, incompetence and neglect.   

Instead of hiding until we had forgotten about this episode, Toussaint, arrogantly tried to justify the pitiful state of the stadium by attributing it to a totally new phenomenon, exclusive to Mauritius – rain! You perhaps didn’t know but in countries where it rains or – God forbid! – snows, there are no football pitches! What I hope you have ironically learnt from this is one additional value crucial in sports – humility. I wish you loads of it. The kind of humility that would allow you not only to acknowledge your mistakes when you have erred and apologise but also to think of those who each contributed in their own way to sports in this country. Some were blatantly sacrificed on the altar of petty and vengeful politics: Bruno Julie, Michael Glover, Pierrot Noël, Late Ram Ruhee, Jean-Roland Delaître, Yves Fanchette, Mamade Elahee... Our political leaders, too eager to discard anyone who did not swear allegiance to them, turned the games into a political party meeting where spin-doctors were working full time. I am confident you will not follow their example and that you will always remember those who have led the way so that your successors recognise your achievements. Let the principle of fair play, inherent in the discipline you have made us enjoy and appreciate these last few days continue to permeate everything you do.

Until we meet again, the best of luck. You have made us proud. So, thank you. From the bottom of our hearts.

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