THE Athletics Association of Guyana (AAG) National Seniors Championships kicks off today at the National Track and Field Centre in Leonora, where a number of athletes, still hopeful of making it to the Guyana team to the 2016 Rio Olympics will have a chance to qualify for the Olympics.Today’s Championships is one of only two events which any Guyanese athlete who wishes to represent Guyana at the Rio Olympics must attend. The other event is the upcoming Aliann Pompey Invitational, which is set for June 18.
Athletes set to participate include CARIFTA Games triple jump silver medallist Natricia Hooper, CARIFTA Games bronze medallist, Andrea Foster, and Olympics hopefuls Rupert Perry, and Akeem Stewart.
Registration for the meet closed off yesterday, and according to AAG president Aubrey Hutson, over 100 athletes are set to participate at the event.
Hutson says that he is thrilled that for the first year the AAG can mandate that athletes come home to perform if they want to make it on any international team to represent Guyana.
“It’s heartening to know that we can have our athletes at home, because prior to not having a track there was always the complaint that they (overseas athletes) could not come off rubber to run on grass, as their times will be slower.
So for that reason a lot of the guys who would have represented Guyana at the Olympics never came to compete in Guyana.
“So I am glad that the track is in place and we have the equipment to accurately test the performances. Now that we have the synthetic track, we have the wind gauge, we have all the equipment that is needed to electronically set the times to IAAF standards and acceptance.” Hutson stated.
The mandate is really aimed at getting overseas-based Guyanese athletes to come home to perform so that Guyanese can have a chance to catch the athletes performing live. Though none of the overseas-based athletes is expected to be on show this weekend, several are confirmed to be here for the AP Invitational in two weeks.
Hutson’s hopes are still high that some athletes will make an Olympic qualifying standard on home ground.
“We have athletes who are pushing to make qualifying standards, they are on our Olympic long list, and we are getting there but some of the timings are not as fantastic.” He said.
The two-day Championships starts at 12:00hrs with today’s schedule including the heats and finals of the 100m and 400m sprints, the 1500m finals, as well as the long jump, javelin, women’s shot put and the 4x100m relays.
The event continues tomorrow, beginning at 09:00hrs, with two sessions set for the day – one in the morning and one in the afternoon. The morning session will feature the triple jumps, the women’s high jump, men’s shot put, the discus events, 200m heats, and the 800m finals.
The event concludes in the afternoon session with the 200m finals, 3000m for women, 5000m for men, men’s high jump and 4x400m relays.