HEADING into today National Sports Commission’s 2012 awards ceremony, veteran West Indies batsman Shivnarine Chanderpaul leads the nominations for Senior Sportsman-of-the-Year with a total of three nominations. The former West Indies captain who is currently ranked at number three in the world in the ICC Test Rankings leads national powerlifter Winston Stoby who has two nominations.
Last year Stoby recorded double gold in the 74kg class at the Caribbean Powerlifting Championships that was staged in the U.S Virgin Islands. Added to that, he became Guyana’s first World Powerlifting Champion at the World Powerlifting Championships in Texas in October. He is currently 53 years old.
Other contenders are Randolph Morgan, also a powerlifter, Superbike’s Stephen Vieira and recently-turned-pro boxer, Clive Atwell.
The nominees for Junior Sportsman-of-the-year are Gumendra Shewdas (Powerlifting), Paul DeNobrega (Cycling), Nyron Joseph (Squash) and Alexander Cheeks (Karate).
Table tennis player Chelsea Edghill leads the female Senior Sportswoman-of-the-Year ahead of powerlifter Dawn Barker, karate’s Nathalie Gibson and squash’s Nicolette Fernandes.
In the Junior category, vying for the crown are badminton’s Prianna Ramdhani, karate’s Leah Shariff and squash’s Mary Fung-A-Fat.
Major prizes to be won also include Association-of-the-Year, Most Improved Association and Male and Female Sports Personality-of-the-Year. The media also gets into it with Print and Non-Print Journalist-of-the-Year and Photographer-of-the-Year, to name a few categories.
The voting will be done today at 10:00hrs at the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall by a panel of judges with the presentation ceremony to be held sometime next month.