By Rawle Toney
Guyana’s top female distance Athlete Alika Morgan is continuing her superb year in athletics.
On Saturday Morgan claimed one of the Caribbean’s most prestigious races, the UWI half marathon which was contested in Trinidad and Tobago.
It was Morgan’s third UWI half marathon and she won the event by running 1:27:03s which is much slower than her previous attempt of 1:25:36 which earned her third place.
Second place went to Sharmain Lasaldo who ran 1:27:56s while Panice Burnette also of Trinidad finished third with a time of 1:28:51s.
Meanwhile, Cleveland Forde is proving to be the man to be beat in the Caribbean this year despite finishing second in the race that featured all of the big names of the region’s distance athletes.
Forde narrowly lost to Nicolas Kierono of Uganda who ran 1:05:35s to the Guyanese time of 1:08: 25s.
Forde just last week won two stages of the annual IAAF South American 10K event against strong challenges from rivals Pamenos Ballentyne (1:08:53), Zyphanious Joseph (1:09:16) and Trinidadian Richard Jones fourth (1:9:26).
Another Guyanese, Kevin Johnson, finished seventh.
The University of the West Indies (UWI) half marathon had over 1000 participants from all over the world competing for over TT$125,000 including specific categories for UWI students and staff, University students and wheel-chair as well as physically-challenged competitors.
