GUYANA may be hosting the South American Junior Championships in May, since original host of the event, Bolivia, has pulled out of the hosting due to reasons beyond their control. However, as always, funding will be a major determining factor.
When president of the Athletics Association of Guyana (AAG) Aubrey Hutson travels to Sao Paulo later this month for the South American Athletics Confederation’s (CONSUDATLE) Annual General Meeting, he will be submitting a final proposal for the hosting of the event, optimistic that all will go smoothly and the hope becomes a reality.
“We would have already indicated to them our willingness and they would have said: “ok, put together your documents and get back to us”. We are preparing those documents now, but at the end of the day we need funding.” Hutson told Chronicle Sport yesterday.
“We are in the possibility stages, but I’m very, very positive that once we are able to meet our budgetary demands that we will be able to host it.”
According to Hutson the budget for the event will be somewhere in the area of US$58 000, (Approx. G$11,600,000) of which some US$30 000 will come from the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF). It will be up to Guyana to come up with the rest.
The AAG will be reaching out to the government, while the Guyana Olympic Association (GOA) has also already been made aware of the body’s plans. Hutson is expected to meet with Director of Sport Christopher Jones, and possibly other government officials, today to discuss their involvement. He does not believe the event can come off without government commitment.
“It being an international event we must seek government’s blessings, we will depend on them for things like security of the athletes when they get here, so we must engage the government, whether they contribute financially is another story.” Hutson related.
“The GOA knows of it, we expect them to make their contributions as well. The issue is getting the commitment. Unless we can get that kind of commitment from the local players then it makes no sense we go and tell South American that we are going to throw our hat in the ring in a major way.”
If all things goes well and Guyana hosts the event this will be the first time that an international event of such magnitude would be held here on local soil; boding well for athletics in Guyana, which only last year held the Aliann Pompey Invitational, Guyana’s first international event on the synthetic track.
The South American Junior Championships is a biennial event at which junior athletes (Under-20) from all across South America participate in athletics event. The last Championships was held in Ecuador where it was reported that 245 athletes from 11 nations participated.
Hutson pointed out that Guyana hosting the Championships will present a wide range of benefits for athletics in Guyana, and the country at large; not the least of which will be Guyana being able to field a much larger team that could ever be possible if the team had to travel to another country.
The local athletes will also have home ground advantage, being able to participate under familiar climate and track conditions.
“It’s going to do a whole lot. It will show our preparedness for hosting other international competitions and people being comfortable with us as a host, that’s number one.
“Secondly it will allow a large portion of our athletes to be in an international competition, because once we get to host it then there’s no control over your team size. You can enter athletes in every event, there’s no control over your team size,” Hutson pointed out.
He continued on points of what it would do for tourism, a point he will be highlighting heavily in talks with government.
“These athletes are not going to come by themselves, they’re going to be coming here with parents, and coaches, and the local tourism industry will benefit. So those are just some of the areas that we are highlighting in our sales pitch to the government. This is not just about track and field this is about Guyana being seen as a hosting destination for events of such magnitude,” Hutson noted.
Hutson said such a event will mark the beginning of the National Track and Field Centre finally being utilised as it was always meant to be.
“We have our NTAF over there which in our opinion is still grossly underutilised, so unless we start hosting international competitions to show the true magnitude of what the stadium can do, we just might be doing a disservice to ourselves, so we think it will benefit Guyana in a very major way to host this competition.”