By Kizan Brumell
Guyana’s Cleveland Forde and Brazil’s Sueli Vieira stormed to victory in the male and female Open international categories of the first stage of the seventh annual South American 10K Road Race Classic which was run on the roads of Georgetown yesterday.
“The race was not as fast as I expected it to be, I thought it would have been faster. It showed that persons were trying to win and concentrated on running a tactical race,” Forde said.
“Even though the breeze was there early in the race it was not a problem because the first half of the race was easy, so I know it would have been a challenging finish,” he added.
He implied that he was pleased with the turnout of athletes, both local and foreign and also with the spectators.
Stabroek Sports also caught up with the St. Vincent and Grenadines’ Pamenos Ballantyne who was second in the first leg in 2008. He turned in a disappointing performance as he finished 11th overall with a time of 35:25.9s.
“During the race my right hamstring was giving me some trouble so I decided to keep a steady pace and finish the race. Normally I would try to speed up the race half way through but I couldn’t. I wasn’t tired, I decided to take it easy because I have a lot of races coming up,” Ballantyne.
On the subject of improvement, he said much in Guyana had not been done and there is a lot that needs to be done to get more youths involved in the sport since they are the future stars.
“The entire Caribbean has a lot of natural talent and more needs to be done to nurture the talent from young so that they would not be left at the same place all the time” he stated.
Forde, who has been undefeated in the leg for the past three years, completed the course in a time of 33:27.3s ahead of Brazil’s Eliesio (33:40.5s), Trinidad and Tobago’s Richard Jones (33:41.6s) and Guyana’s Lionel D’Andrade (34:03.2s) and Dennis Horatio (34:09.3s).
Vieira dominated the female category with a time of 38:20.6s, beating Guyana’s top female long distance runner Alika Morgan into second place.
Morgan ran 40:23.6s.
T&T’s Shermin Lasaldo, Suriname’s Ilsida Toemere and Guyana’s Ashanti Scott followed with times of 40.46.5s, 43:12.0s and 43:32.0s respectively.
Quinn George (35:09.2s), Jamal Chisholm (36:07.8s) and Kevin Bayley (36:22.4s) where the top three finishers in the boys’ 18-20 Male category while Shemicka Gordon (51:41.0s) and Dascia Junor (52.14.0s) were first and second in the female category.
Jevina Staker, Janella Jonas and Rayana Williams topped the female 16-18 years category with times of 42:44.0s, 44:09.0s and 47:44.0s while Chavez Sital, Jonathon Fagundes and Natheniel Giddings clocked times of 35:28.4s, 36:25.9s and 37:58.6s in the male category.
The Masters category had Llewellyn Gardner winning in a time of 39:32.0s, Maurice Fagundes finished second with 47:15.0s and Curtis Archer – third, with 50:49.0s.
