AFTER seeing the completion of another AP Invitational Meet, Aliann Pompey pronounced that the event is here to stay, and lauded those who would’ve contributed to its success.

Pompey, the Commonwealth Games 400M gold and silver medallist, told Chronicle Sport on Saturday that this year’s meet held in her honour, in association with the Athletics Association of Guyana (AAG), was beyond successful.

“I think it’s a successful meet in the sense that a good amount of athletes competed, meet records were broken, team Guyana did well… I think it was also successful in the sense of the amount of people that came out to watch the event; they were certainly entertained” Pompey said.

This year’s AP Invitational featured St Kitts and Nevis’ world-rated sprinter Kim Collins, the 2003 World Champion in the 100m, who joined athletes from over 17 countries, including Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, the USA and Bahamas in the event.

“The key thing is us being able to have the calibre of someone like Kim Collins here to compete, and we were able to do that with the additional support from sponsors and key partners” Pompey noted, while adding “I think as we’re able to grow, it will get bigger, and we have to offer incentives for those athletes to come here.”

“Not that we don’t have what it takes to reach out to athletes, but we have to give them a reason to come here; we have to tell them financially it makes sense, we have to be able to tell them it’s well attended and we have to be able to sell out Guyanese hospitality” said the 39-year-old former National athlete.

Pompey said that like everything in life, there’s always room for improvement. However, she “don’t really see anything glaring that would prevent us doing this in the future. I would like to commend the officials for the job that they’ve been doing.”