On Saturday, North Georgetown (District 11) launched an official protest stating that they should be the winners.
The bickering and hullabaloo between the two districts have been going on since the inception of the Championships back in 1959 as the two districts are said to have hands down, some of the best athletes in the country.
Upper Demerara finished with a total of 67 points as compared to North Georgetown’s 63 which placed them second while third place went to District 7 (Bartica) with 56 points.
But North Georgetown Zone Secretary, Marlon Laing, said that actually official over-all scores should read North Georgetown 66 points and 65 points for Upper Demerara.
“We have evidence that we (North Georgetown) did in fact win the championship because the computerized results show us with 66 points and Linden with 65 because we finished second in the Teachers championships and they have us way down I think its fourth or something like that but our calculation corresponds with that of the computerized version,” Laing told Stabroek Sport.
Laing added that they “have officially launched the protest and we were told by the games committee that by Wednesday we’ll have an official announcement and if we don’t get that by then, then we know what we’ll do.”
Nicholas Fraser, a member of that games committee, confirmed that North Georgetown had indeed launched an official protest and told this newspaper that they were presently scrutinizing the results.
“They have written to us,” Fraser said, adding that.. “They have paid the $5000 protest fee so we are going through the results to see if their claims that they are the true winners of the Nationals are accurate.
“As a matter of fact up to late last evening (Friday) the officials were doing this so we’ll know by Wednesday what the outcome of this is.”
Contacted last evening, manager of the Upper Demerara team, Mayfield Taylor-Trim, said that they are yet to be informed officially about the protest and only learnt about it through an uproar by the north athletes.
“As far as I know nothing was said to us, we only knew about it when some of their athletes came in to camp in an unruly manner shouting ‘we want we trophy’ and we didn’t even respond to them so as it is right now I know nothing about the protest,” Trim said.
She added that they also were keeping track of the point’s standings and said that based on her calculations, her district knew that it had won the championships.
“Well we would keep our own scores and so because we have been around for a very long time so we knew that it would have been ours again this year.
“You know last year they said that we cheated to win when we hosted it in Linden but this year we had nothing to do with it. The scoring was done professionally and district 10 had nothing to do with the scoring so I’m puzzled to hear about the claims now, so as far as I know we are the champions,” Taylor-Trim noted.
