Brandon BAILEY

Considered Trinidad & Tobago’s greatest weightlifter of the 1960s, and greatest heavyweight lifter ever, Brandon Bailey competed as a heavyweight at the 1964 Olympics. He came to Tokyo after having won a bronze medal at the 1962 Commonwealth Games, a silver medal at the 1962 Pan American Games, and winning the heavyweight division at the 1962 Central American and Caribbean Games. After Tokyo, he would win two further international bronze medals, at the 1966 Commonwealth Games and the 1967 Pan Americans.

Bailey attended Eastern Boys Primary School and the Arima RC School. He first represented Trinidad at the 1958 West Indian Championships in Port of Spain. He was not as active around 1960 because of his schooling in education at the Teachers Training College. After his retirement from weightlifting he taught physical education at the Five Rivers Junior Secondary School, but also helped with the strength training of athletes from the Abilene Track Club, and was a technical adviser to cyclists in his native Arima after taking some training courses in sport and physical education in Mexico. He was inducted into the WITCO Sports Hall of Fame in 1985. In 2012 he was honored as one of the 50 legends of sport for Trinidad and Tobago for the period 1962-2012.