By Kiev Chesney
Even before the dust had settled on the apparent `blunder’ on the part of the Athletics Association of Guyana (AAG) of not taking up the two free tickets offered to its athletes to participate at the Commonwealth Youth Games in Pune, India, later this year, the AAG’s poor administration has once again been revealed.
According to the information reaching Stabroek Sport, Alika Morgan, undisputedly Guyana’s most talented junior and possibly senior track and field athlete, will not be able to attend the 12th Annual IAAF World Junior Championships scheduled to be held in Bydgoszcs, Poland, July 8-13th.
Morgan was overlooked by the AAG who selected Oslyn Collins to represent this country at the World Junior Championships.
Morgan missed out on attending the World Youth Championships last year after her travel document arrived too late according to the AAG.
Morgan was not available for comment since she has not yet returned from the fourth annual Caricom 10K road race which she won in Antigua last weekend, but her coach Leslie Black yesterday commented on the matter.
“The AAG just keep doing nonsense with the athletes in this country and I wouldn’t stand for it anymore,” an obviously upset Black told Stabroek Sport.
“They [AAG] do all these nonsense all the time, but this time it will crush my athlete because it means that she will never get a chance to ever participate in a junior world championships.”
This is Morgan’s last year as a junior athlete.
Black said that he became even more annoyed when he heard that the AAG selected Collins as Guyana’s lone athlete to participate at the junior championship.
He said that there was no possible way that Collins could have even be ranked among the country’s best junior athletes much less be ranked ahead of Morgan.
When Stabroek Sport contacted President of the AAG, Claude Blackmore on Monday, he admitted that the AAG had, in fact selected Collins and was currently awaiting her confirmation from the IAAF for her to participate as an unqualified athlete.
Collins, a 400m and 800m athlete, is a member of the Progressive Youth (Police) but has been training in Trinidad and Tobago for the past six weeks or so.
At the Hampton International Games this year, Collins clocked 1:00.94s (6th of 6) in the 400m and 2:31s in the 800m (12th of 12) which were some of her better performances this season.
The qualifying standards for the women’s female 800m and 400m are 2:09s and 55.1 respectively which would mean that Collins is some five seconds off a qualifying spot in the 400m and 20 seconds in the 800m.
According to the IAAF website “Member Federations who have no male and/or no female qualified athlete but whose best athlete excels in a field event, may submit to the IAAF, by the time of the Preliminary Entry deadline, the name(s) of their athlete(s) plus performance(s) they would like to enter in the field events”.
Collins, clearly not the best athlete the field, has still been submitted to the IAAF as the country’s best choice for the event.
All attempts made to questions AAG president on the grounds of Collins selection yesterday were futile.
However AAG Chairman of the Development Cornel Rose said that Collins’s name was submitted to the IAAF after Annalisa Austin – who had reportedly qualified for the 100m in this event – pulled out with injury.
Rose said Collins was selected in order to escape the penalties and fines attached to not participating in the event coupled with the fact that AAG had already purchased a ticket for a female.
