BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC – Guyana’s Cleveland Forde underlined his growing status as a commanding force in regional distance running with a good win against a quality field in De Heart Uh Barbados 10-kilometre road race on Saturday.

Forde clocked 34 minutes, 52 seconds to win ahead of former champion Pamenos Ballantyne, of St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) and St Lucian Zepherinus Joseph, the leading CARICOM distance runners this decade.

The result completed back-to-back wins for Forde, who had beaten Trinidad and Tobago’s Richard Jones and Ballantyne in the Granny Lucess 15K the previous week in Trinidad.

Forde’s winning time was outside of the race record 34:08 by Ballantyne from 2007, but he was stronger than Ballantyne (34:54) at the finish with Joseph third in 34:57.

Ballantyne, a nine-time winner of the OECS Half Marathon and seven-time T&T International Marathon is expected to put his CARICOM 10K title on the line against Forde and the region’s best early next month in Guyana.

Forde, who won three consecutive CARIFTA Games 5,000-metre titles before training in recent years at the Kip Keino IAAF High Performance in Kenya, served notice of his rise to the top last year with some victories over Ballantyne, including triumphs in the South American 10K and the Baldwin Spencer 10K

Forde’s Guyanese colleague Lionel D’Andrade was fourth in 35:12 and St Lucian Jason Sayers was fifth in 35:21.

Barbadian Sandra Jones ran a new record 47:20 to take the women’s title over Dominique Marshall (47:29) with Aruba’s Dirksz Shariska third in 48:49.

Valencia Paulina, of St Thomas, was fourth in 53:02.