IT’S NOT often world-rated international athletes visit out shores to ‘re-ignite a spark’ of a long lost event or interest in current events.

The U.S. Embassy has flown 100m hurdler Kristi Castlin here to do just that – to inspire young athletes to develop their talents to compete on the world stage. But they’ve also made provisions for the elite athlete to interact with our local coaches.
At the National Sports Resource Centre on Woolford Avenue, coaches, mainly those from athletics, had a two-hour session with Castlin. And while they tentatively asked questions of her, most were intended for the Director of Sport Neil Kumar.
Castlin is a hurdler but boxing coach Terrence Poole asked if she would have an input in re-starting the event in Guyana. The event has not seen the ‘light of day’ at local meets in over a decade.
Kumar told the gathering that government was in the process of sourcing necessary equipment and infrastructure to re-introduce track and field events that were dropped from local meets.
The equipment of course will be sent to the Synthetic Track at Leonora, which also has provisions for the Steeplechase and a net for the hammer throw. A hammer is a metal ball, like a shot put, connected to a handle.
A time-frame on when these hurdles and other equipment will reach these shores was not given by Mr Kumar.
On that point Castlin told the coaches of the importance of improvising, thinking outside the proverbial box and investing what they may have into developing their athletes.
‘The only person you can rely on is yourself. If you’re responsible for your athletes, you got to invest, get on facebook, twitter, because a lot of the time things are not the way you expect.’
President of the Athletics Association of Guyana, Aubrey Hutson, was also part of the session. The Director of Sport had earlier ‘called him out’ on a medium and long term proposal to introduce and in some instances re-introduce events to local meets.
Hutson is hoping Castlin’s visit will inspire particularly female athletes to become involved and/or work harder to develop themselves.
That aside, Castlin told the coaches of her experiences competing around the world, her diet and pre-competition training.
When the ‘sit-down’ aspect was over, Castlin took the coaches onto the field outside to demonstrate warm-up drills and explain the rationale behind choosing a particular type of drill.

(By Leeron Brumell)