THE National Track and Field Centre was alive with excitement on Friday as the Ministry of Education (MoE) hosted its inter-school Jubilee Relay Festival which saw the Christianburg/Wismar Secondary running away with a controversial winAccording to results, the Christianburg Wismar Secondary ended with 46 points, while West Demerara Secondary who finished second ended with 40 points.
However, this did not sit well with the West Dem team as the final tabulation excluded the results from several of the finals.
Uitvlugt Secondary took third place with 30 points, Bartica Secondary was fourth with 29 points, and Mahaicony Secondary rounded out the top five with 24.
Tutorial High School (20), Lodge Secondary School (18), St John’s College (18), Chase Academic Foundation (13) and Central High (13) were the next five to follow.
Also participating was North West Secondary (12), Golden Grove Secondary (10) and President’s College (1).
Meanwhile, in the tertiary category the University of Guyana walked away with straight wins in all of their events, namely the boys’ and girls’ 4×100 and medley relays.
Christianburg picked up the win in the boys’ open 4x100m and girls’ 800m medley, while taking second behind West Dem in the girls’ open 4x200m.
Tutorial High was first place in the boys’ under 13 4x100m and sprint medley, as well as the boys’ under 15 4x200m.
Off to a late start, the day’s event was plagued with glitches, not the least of which turned out to be record-keeping, which was handled by officials from the Athletics Association of Guyana (AAG).

One glaring error even saw a team that qualified in the heats being left out of the finals, as chaos prevailed.
These glitches further saw the event’s scheduled 16:00hrs end stretching late into the evening, and teachers and parents alike complaining about the need to take the young athletes home.
The decision was therefore made that the finals of several of the events be cancelled and to judge the races based on finals by time, using timings ran in the heats of those races earlier in the day.
However, this did not sit well with many of the team managers from the different schools, particularly second-place finishers, West Demerara.

Chants of “injustice!” came from the West Demerara camp as Christianburg was announced the winners.
A disgruntled West Demerara teacher complained, “We qualified for all of those events. West Dem was leading all the time, so to say now that we have lost it is hard for us to accept that. Everything went smooth all day for West Dem. We were here from 8 o’clock to 9:10pm just to hear this? Run the other events and let us be satisfied if we lose, but don’t stop it now and say Linden win.”
There were also complaints of how highly disorganised the overall event was.