– sprint ace Ashley Tasher’s running career saved by migration
Not ‘good-bye’ but ‘good luck’: Ashley Tasher (second right) and her mother Adi Ritchie is embraced by coaches of the Running Brave track Club Tuesday at the National Park
Fourteen-year-old sprint sensation Ashley Tasher may finally have the opportunity to truly realise her potential and prowess as she has migrated to the land where her role models, world sprint champions Sanya Richards Ross and Allyson Felix reside.
Ashley departed yesterday for the United States of America (U.S.A.) where she plans to continue her track and field career and move closer to realising her dreams of competing at the Olympic Games.
The former Bishops High School student said her goodbyes to her coaches and fellow athletes at the Running Brave Track Club in the National Park on Tuesday afternoon. Guyana Times International Sport managed to spend a few moments with the phenomenally talented 14-year-old as she reflected on her remarkable surge to the top of local athletics in a matter of months.
Ashley has been the most talked about junior athlete in Guyana over the past year, and broke records in all the individual events in at last year’s Guyana Teachers’ Union’s 50th Annual Athletics Championships. She shattered the girls’ Under-14 100m and 200m records at that event, and her times were even faster than those recorded by the U-18 and U-20 winners of those events.
Ashley Tasher in full stride during Schools ‘Nationals’ at the Guyana National Stadium last year
Ashley also swept the sprint events at one of the Caribbean’s most prestigious junior track and field competitions, the Hampton International Games in Trinidad and Tobago. There she captured gold in the 100m, 200 and 400m in her age category.
Tasher said that while she will miss everything about her native land, she is elated by the prospect of moving to a place which has so much to offer her as an athlete. As she walked around the track at the National Park, Ashley looked ahead to her future in athletics in the U.S.A. with much delight.
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