WITH just seven days remaining before the launch of the 2012 Olympic Games in London, the Guyanese team is ready and raring to go. This was one of the few sentiments expressed yesterday at Olympic House during a press briefing.
Present at the briefing was head of the Guyana Olympic Association (GOA) K.A Juman-Yassin alongside the managers and coaches of the three disciplines that Guyana will be participating in.
The disciplines are Athletics, Swimming and Judo. The six-member team includes Aliann Pompey (Women’s 400m), Winston George (Men’s 400m) and Jeremy Bascom (Men’s 100m) who will participate in athletics.
Niall Roberts and Whitney Van Lange are scheduled to take part in the Men’s and Women’s 100m Freestyle respectively, while Guyana’s lone Judoka is Raul Lall who is set to compete in the Men’s Under -60kg category.
According to the GOA president, the other members of the team who will be accompanying the six athletes are AAG president Colin Boyce, Shawn Baksh the swimming coach, Dr Karen Pilgrim (swim team manager), athletics coaches Lyndon Wilson and Joseph Ryan, and Judo manager Geoffrey Sankies.
Mr Yassin disclosed that they covered all the expenses possible for getting the team to the event and also their accommodation. He said: “This time GOA was able to meet the expenses of getting the team to London. Normally we would ask each association for assistance but this time we were able to dig deeper into our resources.”
He said that the association was firm in their decisions for the games but managed to run into just one problem.
They received a letter of concern from Pompey which stated that she had been receiving unpleasant words and threats. This came in light of the 17-year-old US-based Guyanese Kadecia Baird, who recently ran an official time of 51.04s over 400m.
She achieved the feat of the fifth fastest time ever run by a US high school athlete. However, she could not be a part of the Guyanese contingent for the games simply because she was not accredited. The bulk list of athletes was submitted March 23 and Baird was not on that list.
When contacted by the GOA to state why she had not been selected she clearly understood and had no objections. She and her coach also added that they had no contribution in the malice towards Pompey.
Boyce, Baksh, Sankies and Dr Pilgrim all echoed the same sentiments that they are very confident that the athletes will perform well and make Guyana proud even if they happen to not make podium finishes.