Defence Headquarters (DHQ) once again pulled out another victory at the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) annual athletics championships yesterday at the Camp Ayanganna ground.
DHG, which lead all the way up to the final day yesterday, had major help from Patrick King to record an aggregate of 336 points in winning the championships while Base Camp Ayanganna (BCA) was second on 231 points. Three, One Special Forces and Training Core tied for third with 173 points while First Infantry and Artillery tied for fourth with 132 points.
King copped a sprint double for DHQ running away with the men’s 100 metres in a dominant fashion to record a time of 10.2s leaving Akeem Stewart who was strongly favoured to upset King in second place with a time of 10.5s.
Later in the day, King blew the field away, sprinting off with the men’s 400 metres in 48.8s to dethrone Leslain Baird who finished second in 49.6s. Adrian Corlette came in third with 53.1s to hold off Darren Henry who finished fourth in 53.4s.
Earlier in the day, sprint king Rupert Perry ran away with his first final in eight months on Guyanese soil after returning from a training stint in Jamaica.
Perry stopped King in his tracks from claiming a sprint triple by forcing King into second place as he won the men’s 200 metres.
Yesterday’s 20m final can be deemed to be one of the fastest 200 metres on Guyanese soil as the first four finishers recorded sub 21s times.
After running a brilliant turn and shutting down at the 170 metres mark, Perry recorded a time of 20.1s while King ran from behind in the final 100 metrres after a bad start to claim second place in 20.4s. Akeem Stewart finished third with 20.7s while Davin Fraser was fourth in 20.9s.
On the distaff side Letitia Myles who seemed destined to run away with a sprint double false started in the female’s 100 metres to give way to Tiffany Smith who dominated the field with a 12.6s run to win the event.
However, in the 200 metres Myles returned with a vengeance destroying Smith from the start of the race winning by approximately 10 metres in a time of 24.5s. Smith who was not even close to Myles in the 200 metres somehow recorded a time of 24.9s while Shonnette Hatton was third in 27.4s.
The women’s 400 metres saw Smith returning to easily dominate the field to win the event in a sub 60s time of 59.7s. Her closest competitor was Shonnette McFarlene in a time of 1:10.1s.
Distance King Cleveland Forde also contributed to DHQ’s win on the final day by outpacing his competition in the men’s 1500 metres clocking a time of 4:03.6s. Tyshon Bentinck who won the 800 metres in 1:57.0s was second with a time of 4:08.7s.
In the invitational events junior 400 metres champion Stephan James took advantage of his rival Chavez Ageday to run away with the men’s invitational 100 metres recording a time of 10.4s while his club mate Neisa Allen won the female version in a time of 12.2s.
The championships came to an end with relay action as DHQ ran away with the men’s 4x100metres while BCA won the female version.
Topping the event off was BCA winning the men’s 4×400 metres relay to close the day while Infantry won the female version.
