… Pascal not competing

A TOTAL OF 90 athletes will take to the road today for the 12th annual South American 10km Road Race Classic, with the money category – the male open division – having 32 entrants and exactly half the number for the females.

There are 11 junior athletes, 26 male masters in the 40 to 55 years and 56 years-and-over classes along with five Women Masters.
Guyana’s hope for male success rests squarely on the shoulders of the defending champion Cleveland Forde while in the female department, overseas-based Euleen Josiah-Tanner has the task of securing a podium finish.
Josiah-Tanner did not complete the course last year. Alika Morgan, a former junior national long distance champion and no stranger to the South American 10km, is set to challenge Josiah-Tanner for supremacy in the absence of last year’s champion Kenisha Pascal.
Pascal of Grenada is unable to make today’s race, but here seeking to recapture the 2012 crown she did not defend last year, is Trinidadian Tonya Nero, who opted to contest this event and forego the defence of her University of the West Indies Half-Marathon crown.
With Nero is Jenelle Nedd who is no stranger to the SA 10km along with Richard Jones who is eager to rekindle his rivalry with Forde, after finishing second to the man known to Guyanese as ‘The Little Kenyan’, in the 2012 event, even as the Suriname duo Clifton Betje and ILsida Toemere pose a threat.
Forde’s fitness is a bit of a worry for Guyana, as he is still recovering from an illness but up to press time last night, he was still registered to run.
If a new course record will be set today, it remains to be seen, as the fastest times for the South American 10km here were both set by Brazilians with Romalo DaSilva clocking 30 mins 31 seconds in the 2003 event and one year later Selma Dos Reis clocked 36 mins 56 secs to take the female category.
The race starts just outside GT&T’s earth station on Carifesta Avenue, proceeds east along the Rupert Craig Highway and turns at the University of Guyana traffic lights (Turkeyen). The athletes then make their way west down the highway, to the Kitty Public Road, to Vlissengen Road, to Thomas Lands and into the National Park for the finish in the vicinity of the children’s monument.
As in previous years, the course will be closed to vehicular traffic in time for a 15:30hrs start and president of the Athletics Association, Aubrey Hutson, told Chronicle Sport that he was satisfied with the logistical aspect of the race. The foreign athletes were given a ‘run’ of the course yesterday.

(By Leeron Brumell)