Michael Saul, Keith Roberts, Larry Josiah, Trevor Scotland, Natasha Alder and many others emerged during the sunset years of a great era in Guyana’s athletics.
They were school champions who were involved in many epic battles that are still talked about by those who were there to witness them.
Also, in many instances, when these trips down memory lane are taken there are often sentiments like “you don’t see them like that anymore too often”, referring to those nostalgic years.
But like everything else times change, people grow up, new champions emerge, paradigms shift. And today these former schools and national champions are police officers and still compete for Guyana and their various divisions in the Guyana Police Force (GPF). In competition today they will be reliving their glory days.
Today is the final day of the 56th edition of the GPF Track & Field Champion-ships at the Eve Leary ground.
The day starts with the characteristic opening ceremony at 09:30 hours with the march past of teams and the lighting of the torch.
Afterwards, the officers from Guyana, Trinidad & Tobago, and Barbados will vie for supremacy in the international championships in the finals of the 100m, 200m, 400m, 1500m and sprint relays.
Additionally, Headquar-ters, A Division, B Division and Country Division will be looking to gain local honours.
Going into today’s championships Guyana has a healthy lead over T&T and Barbados while HQ has an unassailable advantage over the three other local divisions.
Guyana currently has 138 points while T&T and Barbados have 54 and 33 points respectively. And in local competition HQ has 283 while A, B and Country Divisions trail with 136, 43 and 41 points respectively.
Also on show today are the young athletes of the Police Progressive Youth Club (PPYC) in the 100m and 400m and the invited athletes running in the 100m, 200m, 400m and 800m races.
On the other hand, Roberts and Saul will reignite their years of rivalry today in the men’s A class 100m final. However, there can be an upset in the making courtesy their teammate Winston George, who has been creating a name for himself, starting with last year’s inter-services championships at Camp Ayanganna – the other competitors in the race are Shane Dyer of T&T and Barbados’ Andre Miller.
In the men’s B class 100m national cricketer Trevor Benn and one-time young sprint sensation Okeme Stewart are the front runners with their 11.4s on day one of the championships. Cordell Mentore, Odell Percival, Akeem Atkins and Kwame Hyman complete the roster for that event.
The hot ladies’ favourite is Nadine Rodrigues of HQ but an eagerly anticipated contest is expected between her and Leota Bobb, also of HQ. They both won their heats on day one ahead of Cindy Fraser, Melissa Punch, Akila Alves and Shemaine Clarke.
Rodrigues, former club and school champion, also will be looking to claim the sprint treble in the quarter mile (400m).
This time strong opposition will be coming from the 800m champion of the meet Dellie Williams.
For the men, Scotland should be looking to add the 400m title to his 800m win on Wednesday.
The onus, however, will be on dark horses Mark Edwards and Kenrick Drayton to upstage Scotland, who is in fine form at the moment.
