Most of the sporting fraternities can take credit at the end of the year for the progress in their sport, or at least give an account of their shortcomings in order to know where it is necessary to improve in the coming year. This is, regrettably, not the case with the Athletics Association of Guyana.
Progress in athletics in 2010 has been hugely due to the individual efforts of athletes or other stakeholders attempting to make up for the inadequacies of the local governing body in track and field. In 2010, the association cancelled several of its competitions because of the rain, and kept most of the athletes off the track from March to September. When the association finally held the National Championships in September, many athletes opted out of participation to reserve themselves for other competitions, and the meet was poorly attended by both patrons and athletes.
Apart from the limited competitions, the AAG had not initiated programmes for the development of local athletes — such as making scholarship opportunities available, exposing athletes to training stints abroad, or bringing overseas coaches to help Guyanese.
As for working to attain a facility, the AAG also seemed not to have made any strides on that track either. The government of Guyana, through the Culture, Youth and Sport Ministry, penned the deal with the contractors for the erecting of the synthetic track at the location of the former Leonora Park. Boyce was not in attendance at that historic moment; and, according to a source close to the AAG, none of the AAG officials was invited.
Colin Boyce
Guyana qualifies for a grant of US$120,000 from the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) to aid in laying the actual track. The AAG’s exclusion was therefore puzzling, as collaboration between the two associations may logically be the answer to realising the goal of an all-weather track expeditiously.
Meanwhile, while overseas-based, three-time Olympian Aliann Pompey captured silver at the Commonwealth Games and Cleveland Forde shattered the national 1500m record, the AAG selected a sprinter without verifying the legitimacy of his time. Jeremy Bascom, who claimed to have run 10 seconds flat over 100m, was sent to the Games, although his time had not been legitimised up to press time last night. Bascom opted out of the 200m at that event, after failing to make it past the second round of competition in the 100m.
Contacted by this publication to address these and other issues, Boyce declined to comment. Nevertheless, a new female sprint sensation, Ashley Tasher, has blossomed throughout the year; Jevina Straker retained her CARIFTA gold; and GDF sprint aces Rupert Perry, Patrick King and Quincy Clarke continued to turn in impressive performances locally and abroad. Other stakeholders held competitions to make up for the obvious lack of events, and Digicel has also shown interest in the sport. The Inter Service Athletics Championship (ISAC) proved to be the biggest track event of the year. Athletes even opted out of participation at the National Championships to save themselves for ISAC.
In 2011, the World Championships year — the year when athletes begin their qualifying endeavours for the Olympic Games — who knows what fates await the locally-based athletes?
