ATHLETICS in Guyana and athletes are getting more help to compete at more meets outside these borders. It’s the word from the president of the Athletics Association, Aubrey Hutson.

In an interview on Friday, a day after he returned from a Presidents Management Course in Colombia, Huston told Chronicle Sport the performances of this country’s athletes are being recognised.
He said it’s a spin-off partially from Jason Yaw’s record-breaking gold medal 400m run at the South American Youth Championships just over a week ago and Natricia Hooper’s silver in the Girls 400m.
“The offers just started to come in. Colombia offered two tickets to its Pan American Youth Games May 15-16, ahead of World Youth Championships; Chile offered one ticket for a race walker, Argentina and Brazil offered tickets to the Grand Prix,” said an elated Hutson.
“It all comes back to show that once we as administrators in the sport are prepared to invest we will get results. To me, it’s not that athletes weren’t there before, it was that the sport was not managed properly from a macro-standpoint and hence we’re getting now the true results of what we’re looking for,’ said he from his office in Light Street, Alberttown.
“What I’ve been stressing to my executives is that we double whatever quota comes to us for games.”
“We need to realise with the IAAF is that your quota can only go up if you send more athletes and they make the finals, so if you keep accepting what they send to you, you would never move.’
Hutson said it has been the policy of his executive to send as many athletes to meets.
‘All the championships that we got invited to, when they send one ticket or two tickets, we try to send four or at least three.’
“I was surprised one of the Council Members from the United Arab Emirates sent me a congratulatory message on the two bronze medals that we got in Squash at the CAC Games and now again they said “you guys are doing good, your times are getting better, continue to do the good work. How can we help?”
South Korea, Hutson said, has pledged to send four kits for Kids athletics with their number matched by world renowned and record holder in the Pole Vault, Sergey Bubka.
Bubka, who has served as a vice-president of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) since 2007, was in Colombia for the Youth Games. He has signalled his intention to run for the presidency of the association.
That aside, Hutson said there was a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ on raising the level of competition for the annual South American 10km races.
“I lobbied hard for Guyana so we said Guyana will host the first leg and if they (athletes) come, we will host them until the Tuesday or Wednesday. They then go over to Suriname to run on the Saturday and they are going to host them and then they go the following week to Panama. So we all agreed to those dates that we’re going to have our 10km and make it easy so everybody can complete the whole circuit.”
That agreement is to be put in black and white when the member associations meet for their congress, next month in Manaus, Brazil.
Argentina and Paraguay have given verbal agreements to send athletes to the 10km road races.
At the Ordinary Congress, the presidents of the associations within South American also did a Swat analysis on issues in one’s country, the SA bloc and at the IAAF level.
The information from that session is to be discussed and concrete decisions taken at the Congress in January.

(By Leeron Brumell)