LET’s stick/stay with chair seating over hard wood seating at future National Track Championships. I make reference to the Guyana National Stadium. I can personally live with hard wood seating at smaller meet events.
I honestly can’t wait to be educated about the seating capacity at the synthetic track which is currently under construction and whether there will be sheds.

Having perused the dailies on Thursday November 24, 2011 and as a sports enthusiast, I will not support the idea of taking any future National Track Championships away from the stadium. The next best venue would be the synthetic track, but we just have to wait and see the end product, especially with the seating capacity.

We have to understand that there has been an upgrade of some sports facilities and I would want to believe that many would agree that the grass track at the stadium is about the best conditioned one we have in the country for such a major competition/meet. I am also quite aware that the stadium was not erected for any track meet and I have to say kudos to those that have transformed it with lanes. I always felt that a multi-purpose sports complex would have been an ideal and wise venture, but apparently some persons felt that it was better to separate a cricket pitch and track for whatever reason/s.

GTU, I think that you need to improvise and strengthen the marketing strategies for the annual meet via the media. Again, I sense that funding might be an issue you have to cope with, but I seriously think that with some small event ventures you would be able to generate funds to assist in offsetting expenses. So far, I think that you have Digicel and Vitamalt in your corner as sponsors and this is great.

I will publicly share an opinion and hope someone from the planning committee will consider this approach. The first day’s event in the evening at Nationals 2011 was called off due to not having access to the flood lights and the word went around in the stadium that no one paid for floodlights and the cost is somewhere around G$50,000 an hour for one set of floodlights.
There are three major corporate business enterprises close by to the stadium namely, Farfan and Mendes, Sterling Products and MACORP. I honestly believe that if not all three, at least one would respond with an interest of sponsorship commitment towards the 2012 Nationals meet if it is held at the Stadium. Even if you get sponsorship for one hour, it’s progress.
Get the ball rolling with a letter to the above-mentioned enterprises and I mean before the end of 2011. With such early notice it allows the corporate businesses to include sponsorship spending within their annual budgets and in this case,2012.
I leave the rest to the planning committee.