National senior sprint champion Rupert Perry had his first run on home soil yesterday since returning from a High Performance Training Centre in Jamaica and easily qualified for the men’s 200 metres finals of the Guyana Defence Force annual athletics championships.
Perry, who spent six months in Jamaica training in the hope of qualifying for the London 2012 Olympics, jogged his way to a 21.1s 200 metres heat one win at the Camp Ayanganna Sports Club ground to qualify for the final tomorrow.
Triple sprint hopeful Patrick King will have a tough battle with Perry in the final tomorrow.
He too qualified easily in heat three of the men’s 200 metres yesterday, destroying the field by approximately 10 metres to record a time of 21.7s.
Much like the 100 metres heats one day ago, Akeem Stewart won heat two of the men’s 200 metres with the same time as King – 21.7s – to earn his way into a final that is set to draw seemingly the most attention when it runs off.
On the distaff side, newcomer to GDF Letitia Myles, cruised comfortably to a 25.5s victory to qualify for the women’s version of the 200 metres final and will have to face what will probably her toughest competitor at the championships in Tiffany Smith who qualified for the final in heat two by winning in a time of 25.6s.
Former GDF sprint champion Rushelle Coates, who was booted out of the female 100 metres final one day ago with a 15s performance, made her first final of the championships finishing second behind Smith in the women’s 200 metres with a time of 27.9s.
Long distance athlete Ashanti Scott looked in great form in the women’s 3000 metres as she outpaced the rest of her competitors to clock a time of 11:51.1s. Scott’s closest competitor was Karlissa Atkins who finished second in a time of 13:13.70s.
In the firs set of relay action at the championships, Defence Headquarters (DHQ) ran away with the men’s 1500 metres medley event (100m, 200m, 400m & 800m) clocking a time of 3:26.2s. Base Camp Ayanganna (BCA) was a distant second with a time of 3:32.9s while Base Camp Stephenson (BCS) was third in 3:37.1s.
The women’s 800 metres medley (100m, 100m, 200m & 400m) saw BCA taking the first position comfortably in a time of 1:54.6s while Infantry (INF) finished second with a time of 2:01.6s. Special Forces rounded out the top three with a time of 2:21.0s.
Today is the customary rest day while the final day of the championships will be held tomorrow from 10:30hrs.
However, no scores as to which division was in the lead was available up to press time yesterday.
