By Rawle Toney

Preparations for Guyana’s participation in the second leg of the 2008 Inter Guiana Games (IGG) which will be held in French Guiana from November 12-16 are rolling smoothly according to the games planning committee in Guyana.

The committee, which meets weekly to assess the progress of the participating athletes, informed Stabroek Sports yesterday that they were quite impressed with the improvements made by the various athletes and,  from all accounts, Guyana will be a force to reckon with at the games.

Guyana, French Guiana and Suriname will compete in basketball, volleyball and cycling with each discipline being contested by both male and female athletes.

However, unlike last year, this year will see the participation of females in the discipline of cycling which will take on an international flavor with cyclists coming from several European countries. Moreso, this year will also see some participation from Brazil but according to the committee, Brazil’s participation  will only be to add some flavour to the games.  Guyana will be defending the cycling, male basketball and volleyball titles and are second in the overall points standings behind long time rival Suriname.

The games this year will be hosted in Kourou, French Guiana which is known as a European town for its lay out and heavily military presence since the European Rocket Centre is located there.

Given the fact that French President Nicolas Sarkozy is head of the European Union, the hosts have planned to make the games unforgettable.

Director of Sports Neil Kumar is currently in French Guiana for the final meeting of the IGG committee.

The local committee yesterday said that its main focus was to have females in the various disciplines better prepared than last year when the second leg of the games was hosted by Guyana.

Guyana’s females athletes in basketball and volleyball were not as competitive compared to their counterparts from French Guiana and Suriname and as such, the National Sports Commission has pledged to invest heavily in this area.

So far the teams have been meeting every weekend with the aim of retaining their cycling, basketball and volleyball tittles and to have the females salvage some pride by bouncing back from last year’s humiliation at home.