THE first team members on the Guyana contingent to the Islamic Solidarity Games depart Guyana today headed for Baku, Azerbaijan, ahead of the starting of the Games on Friday.
Boxing coach Clifton Moore, and boxers Joel Wilson and Desmond Amsterdam, and athlete Alita Moore will leave Guyana today, while the other team members will follow shortly.
The 24-member team will be travelling to the Games in parts, via differing routes, with some travelling to Suriname and transiting through London while others will fly from Guyana and transit through the USA.
Other arrangements will be put in place for overseas-based participants like athletes Natrena Hooper and Emanuel Archibald, who are currently based in Jamaica. Sole taekwondo athlete Adrian Spellen is also overseas-based.
This was all revealed through a press conference held yesterday at the Guyana Olympic Association (GOA) headquarters in Kingston. Guyana will be represented by six different disciplines at the event.
They are swimming, athletics, table tennis, judo, taekwondo and boxing. Swimming will have Andrew Fowler and Earlando McRae alongside coach Stephanie Fraser while athletics will feature Alita Moore, and Winston George, in addition to Archibald and Hooper. The team will be under coach Mark Scott.
The judokas are Joshua Buchanan and Erskine Trotman, being joined by coach Raoul Archer.
The table tennis players will be under the watchful eyes of Idi Lewis. Chelsea Edghill, Trenace Lowe and Natalie Cummings are the ladies and the men are Christopher Franklin, Nigel Bryan and Joel Alleyne.
Taekwondo coach Ramjeet Ramphal will double also as the contingent’s Chef-de-Mission.
“I am hoping that each discipline gets on that medal podium, each discipline,” Ramphal told the media yesterday as he gave an overview of the touring contingent.
According to the GOA boss, K.A Juman-Yassin the athletes were chosen based on representation from their national federations and associations, adding that, “We have been going to the games since they started in Saudi Arabia over 12 years ago.”
Meanwhile all the coaches expressed readiness for the games, adding that their athletes are well prepared ahead of the event.
This year’s team greatly outnumbers the seven-man team including two officials who attended the Games in 2013, when it was last hosted. George, a double silver medallist, will be the only repeating athlete on this year’s team.
This attendance will mark Guyana’s third participation at the event in just as many hostings.
The Islamic Solidarity Sports Federation (ISSF) is the organisation responsible for the direction and control of the ISG. ISSF is a section of the Organisation of the Islamic Cooperation. The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) (formerly Organisation of the Islamic Conference) is the second largest inter-governmental organisation after the United Nations, and has a membership of 57 states, across four continents.
The OIC is the collective voice of the Muslim world to safeguard and protect the interests of the Muslim world in the spirit of promoting international peace and harmony throughout of the world.
