Thema Williams thrives in her element

To say The­ma Williams is fa­mil­iar with ad­ver­si­ty would be an un­der­state­ment.

The 29-year-old came to be known in the sport of gym­nas­tics, hard­ly the most pop­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ty with­in T&T shores. De­spite this, she made her way to the world stage at the World Artis­tic Gym­nas­tics Cham­pi­onships in 2011 and 2015 re­spec­tive­ly. The lat­ter ap­pear­ance put her in prime po­si­tion to make his­to­ry as the first T&T gym­nast at the Olympic games.

How­ev­er, her tale took an un­for­tu­nate twist as the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gym­nas­tics Fed­er­a­tion (TTGF) opt­ed to se­lect Marisa Dick for the 2016 Rio Olympics in­stead. This led to a le­gal bat­tle, start­ed in May 2016, be­tween her and the TTGF that would see the court rule in Williams’ favour in 2018, award­ing her over $200,000 in com­pen­sa­tion.