… AAG calendar opens in February

THE year 2021 has started in a rush with the first half of the month being completed today. In the latter half of December the Athletics Association of Guyana (AAG) received permission to stage a development meet which was not finalised for a few reasons.
Inclement weather is one of the major reasons which have affected the date selected for the event, since president of the AAG, Aubrey Hutson, had disclosed that he wished to host the event on a grass track.
Hutson believes since the majority of his local athletes have been inactive for quite some time, he did not want to put too much of a strain on them during the competition.
However, following his latest meeting with the Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport, Hon. Charles Ramson Jr, AAG has reconstructed their calendar of events to suit the current state of the sport stricken by the pandemic.

“We are trying to work our calendar down to a minimum of meets that we think we need to have to prepare our athletes for their international engagements. So we are still working on that calendar but we envision that the first Development Meet will be during the first week of February”, he said.
Speaking on his choice of venue for the Development meet, Hutson disclosed that every meet that is organised this year will be held at the Synthetic Track.
This is because the heavy rains has caused grass tracks to become unfit for competitions and also because preparation of these grounds will present a problem during the inclement weather which has been around for numerous weeks. “Everything we do will have to be done at Leonora, so no grass track meets this year. We prefer to go to Leonora and get our coaches in a frame of mind that we would not be doing grass meets this year.  We are going to be pushing our programme to be on rubber; so that they can tailor-make their training to fit that.”

Hutson told Chronicle Sport that the Association hopes it can run off at least three development meets before the full competition season which seems quite possible. AAG was able to successfully stage three marathon events between November and December and what was encouraging to see was that the number of participants increased with each event.
The association was on top of the logistical aspect of those events under the pandemic parameters and will be confident going forward with the hosting of the development meets.
It is also important to note that the Association has to reapply for permission to the National COVID-19 Task Force (NCTF) for each event.
Meanwhile, AAG’s choice to host its first event of the year in February was to give the athletes and coaches ample time to prepare for the engagements.
Hudson confirmed that while some clubs have expressed their desire not to train for reasons known to themselves, some athletes have been doing work on their own. Most of the clubs from Linden, Berbice, Police, Running Brave, GDF and Buxton have training activities going on as well..
“I believe once these athletes know that competition is in the air and there has been approval for competition they will restart,” Hutson opined.