… cites lack of participation at trials

THE Athletics Association of Guyana (AAG) was up to yesterday afternoon still scrambling to put together a full team to represent Guyana in the track and field division of the Inter-Guiana Games (IGG) which begins here in Guyana this Friday.President of the AAG, Aubrey Hutson, speaking with Chronicle Sport via telephone yesterday confirmed that the Association still remained without athletes for certain events including the female high jump.
According to Hutson, the deficiencies emanated from a lack of participation at this year’s staging of the IGG trials which were held earlier this year in May at the Guyana Defence Force ground.
From Hutson’s explanation at least one of the events, at the trials, saw no one show up to compete in it, while another had just one person turning up to participate. Hutson lamented the fact that the trials went on without the presence of some of the leading junior athletes, including the Games defending boys’ 400m champion Jason Yaw.
“What we discovered was that there were a couple events that people did not show up for, so there are still two or three slots that need to be filled. The trials were held but we had no one showing up for the female high jump … Jason didn’t show up for the trials either but he is still our fastest junior athlete so those are things that we are working on,.” Hutson said yesterday.
As such the Association now faces the dilemma of putting together a team of athletes to sufficiently represent Guyana at the tri-nation Games. And with just three more days to go before the commencement of the Games, Hutson remarked that the Association was hopeful of having the issue completely ironed out by yesterday evening.
The Association head felt that the team might still be prepared as the athletes have been in training all the while. This adds to the state of affairs that marred the hosting of trials last year when things were grossly disorganised.
The annual Games which will run for three days will see Guyana compete against athletes from Suriname and French Guiana in the disciplines of athletics, swimming and basketball. This is the first leg of the Games which usually has a second leg held in one of the other countries involving competition in another set of disciplines, namely chess, volleyball, table tennis, football, and cycling.
While the Games officially begins on Friday, the track and field competition will not get under way until Saturday, starting off at 11:00hrs at the GDF ground.

(By Tamica Garnett)