The University of Guyana (UG) will be staging its annual track and field championships next week and for the first time in recent years, the event will be staged over a two-day period according to sports coordinator Lavern Fraser-Thomas.
Earlier this week, Fraser-Thomas confirmed that the event will be held on UG’s ball field on Thursday and Friday. In past years UG had rented the Police Sports Club ground, Eve Leary and the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) ground at Camp Ayanganna but with the comfort of using its own ground, the event has now been extended to a two-day event to allow athletes to compete in more events. According to Fraser-Thomas, many athletes had expressed interest in participating in more than one individual event. Based on the number of entries in last year’s event, many of the races required preliminaries to determine the best athletes.
Having to run heats and finals for multiple events on one day was fatiguing for the athletes. According to Fraser-Thomas the two-day format is expected to address that area as well as put athletes in a position to perform better with enough rest between events.
Additionally Fraser-Thomas stated that even though they began on time, last year they were unable to complete the programme of events because they were too many events to be completed in one day. Apart from the conventional track events, the meet also includes novelty events to facilitate the participation of members of staff.
This year UG’s track and field championships will be sanctioned by the Athletics Association of Guyana (AAG) and qualified official Mark Scott will be the technical delegate.
The programme that has been proposed by that body will see the 5000m and 3000m final will be held on day one along with heats in the 100m, 200m, 400m and 800m if necessary. The javelin and shot put competitions will also be held on day one. The final day of competition will see the final for all sprint events as well the 1500m, 800m, high jump and discus finals. Alexis Williams and Stephon Josiah are the two-time defending champion athletes. UG sent a team of athletes to the Barbados relay fair earlier this year, and Josiah competed at the University Games in China in 2010.
