Caribbean Airlines yesterday continued its usual support for sports in Guyana with a donation to the Guyana Amateur Bodybuilding and Fitness federation (GABFF) to assist six bodybuilders to represent Guyana at this year’s Central American and Caribbean (CAC) Bodybuilding championships in Grenada from October 1-4. Kathy Shuffler-Tenpow, Marketing Assistant of the company yesterday said that her company would be giving the athletes a “massive discount” on their airfare which she says would be very significant based on the exorbitant cost now attached to airline tickets.
President of the GABBFF, Frank Tucker, said that they were very grateful for the support and pointed out that accumulating airfare had always been a worry for his federation. Treasurer of the GABBFF, Fiona Harris, said that it is often difficult for Guyana to have mass representation at these championships given the rate of exchange of the Guyana dollar and this country’s geographical location.
“We feel that this presentation by Caribbean Airlines is a great boost because the CAC body, they chose the best of everything to host these championships and if you look at these men they are huge so we can’t cram them into one room, so it’s very expensive you know so this is very important,” said Harris.
She explained that it would cost the GABFF approximately $2M to send the athletes to Grenada and because the Spice Isle was probably one of the closest venues for the event in recent years, the GABBF was pushing to have as much athletes of possible represented.
“We are still far from reality right now and we only have like one more week to go, but we have probably one of the most important part covered already but accommodations and so on still need to be looked at. So on Sunday we would be having a fund-raiser walk-a-thon from the Bank of Guyana to the National Park” Harris said.
Mr. Guyana Oswen Jones and Ms. Guyana Alicia Fortune will join Clint Duke, Alfred Jordan, Rawle Greene and Marlon Bennett on team Guyana for the CAC bodybuilding championships.
