`Fishy’ Williams outsprints Eastman to cop feature 35-lap event

Marlon `Fishy’ Williams returned a time of one hour16 minutes 04.46 seconds in winning the feature 35-lap event of the National Sports Commission’s (NSC) sponsored 38th Annual `Teach Them Young’ cycle programme in the National Park yesterday.Coming up against a starting bunch of more than 30 cyclists, Williams made his intentions known after just eight laps when himself, Hamza Eastman, Stephano Husbands and Michael Anthony broke from the field and established a sizeable lead, but after staying together for three laps, Husbands and Anthony dropped away from the leading quartet, leaving Williams and Eastman at the helm and the duo held on to the lead, which they interchanged until the final lap when Eastman went into the lead with approximately 300 metres remaining, but Williams, sensing the morbid prangs of defeat, countered at the 200-metre mark and surged ahead of Eastman and crossed the finish line half a bicycle length ahead of Eastman.
The race for the other positions was keenly contested but in the end, last year’s race winner Alonzo Greaves outsprinted Michael Anthony to take third.
The fifth and sixth places were occupied by Robin Persaud and Mark Harris respectively.
Williams as well as Eastman won two prime prizes each while Anthonyn won three and Husbands one.
The juvenile 10-lap race was won by Jamal John who finished ahead of Cleveland King and Christopher Griffith respectively.
In other results, Emmanuel Guypaul won the five-lap race for mountain bikers ahead of Adrian Leung.
The BMX boys 6-9 years old two-lap event was won by Jeremiah Harrison. Second was Alexander Leung and third was Christopher Goring.
Monty Parris won the five-lap race for veterans over 60 years of age. Second was Ian Gibbons and third was Maurice Fagundes.
Jaikarran Sookhai won the five-lap race for veterans under 50 years of age. Second was last year’s winner Junior Niles and third was Blackman.
Rakeem Blair won the three-lap race for BMX boys and girls ahead of Christian Rajnauth and Amminike Gomes respectively, while Sherwin Sampson won the BMX boys 9-12 years old three-lap race ahead of Jeremiah Harrison and Nicholas Dandrade respectively.
Sampson also won the BMX boys 12-14 years three-lap race ahead of Tarran Garbarran an and was subsequently voted the `Most Promising Cyclists’ for the 38th annual `Teach Them Young’ Cycle programme. He was presented with a BMX cycle and a helmet, compliments of Ricks and Sari Group of Companies, which does this annually.
Organiser of the event and national cycle coach Hassan Mohamed thanked each and every participant in yesterday’s activity for participating, noting that they were all winners, since they participated to make the event a success.
Director of Sport Neil Kumar in brief remarks noted that the eight-week `Teach Them Young’ programme was highly successful and moreso was yesterday’s activity.
Kumar reminisced on the number of local cyclists who did Guyana proud at various Regional and International meets and who came through the `Teach Them Young’ programme that was initiated by Mohamed 38 years ago.

(By Michael DaSilva)