THE University of Guyana team to the Barbados Relay Fair returned home last Monday with five medals from the event which was held at the Barbados National Stadium last Saturday.After several near misses on the track, the field event athletes excelled beyond expectations with Kleon Spellen topping the medal haul with gold in the men’s shot put and silver in the men’s discus and javelin.

In the shot put Spellen had a best throw of 12.81m overcoming the 12.44m thrown by Charles Walcott. In the discus throw Spellen’s 34.52m was more than enough to surmount the 25.22m thrown by his nearest competitor Myrico Morris.
However, Spellen’s 46.01m in the javelin was not enough to make it to the top. He was defeated by the 49.80m covered by UWI Blackbirds’ Lamar Clarke. Third place went to Combermere’s Mathew Jones who had 44.32m.
UG copped gold again in the men’s long jump, which was championed by Emanuel Archibald in a winning jump of 6.74m. Archibald’s gold was complemented with a bronze from Ameer Yussuf who covered 6.10m. Second place had gone to UWI Blackbirds’ Jamar Ward who jumped 6.54m.
Plagued with injuries and stiff competition, in the track segment the team still managed to end with impressive performances under the circumstances. Coach for the team, Mark Scott, noted the surprisingly increased level of competition in which teams from several other Caribbean countries participated.
The Boys 4x400m team managed to come in second in their heats. However they did not place in podium position, overall, in the race which was awarded finals by time.
“I am proud of how they performed, we came here, we performed, we had some injuries and we could not fit in people who were supposed to be our regular runners, even our 4x400m was a B team because of the injured athletes that we had. But the increased level of competition and participation was what we were not expecting.” Scott said.
Manager for the team, Lavern Fraser-Thomas also expressed her amazement at the level of competition displayed at the event this year.
The UG Sports Organiser expressed her satisfaction with the teams’ performance, and viewed this experience for the team as a stepping stone towards understanding the level of competition that the athletes will come up against as they aim to develop their skills.
“I was basically satisfied with how things went, the level of competition was much higher this year.” Thomas-Fraser said.

(By Tamica Garnett)