Senior and junior athletes in and out of Georgetown will be on show today at the Guyana Defence Force ground, Camp Ayanganna when the Running Brave Athletic Club in conjunction with the Athletics Association of Guyana (AAG) host the first Developmental Meet for the season.
The Meet, which is mostly to facilitate the junior CARIFTA Games athletes for the Nassau, Bahamas XLII CARIFTA Games at the Robinson National Stadium during the Easter Weekend will commence at 10am.
The Meet will also provide another opportunity for those who failed to make the AAG qualifying standards when the AAG held its CARIFTA Games trials last weekend.
The boys and girls’ category will see competition in the 60, 150 and 300 metre-events while the seniors will compete in the standard events.
The most anticipated event of the day should be the 400m clash which will see Running Brave quarter-miler Stephan James, Police Progressive Youth Club’s Winston George and Shawn Semple in action.
James, last year’s national 400 metres junior champion, will compete against the big guns this weekend after graduating from the junior ranks to the senior category.
James set a new record of 46.99s at the IAAF World Junior Championship in Barcelona, Spain last year.
The record was previously held by Tai Payne, national 400 meters and 800 meters athlete.
While Semple should not be ruled out, the battle is expected to be between James and George, who competed at last year’s London Olympic games.
The 100 metres senior men event will see the likes of Chavez Ageday and Keith Roberts battling for first place. Ageday has a personal best on synthetic track of 10.65 seconds, achieved last year at the U23 Games in Brazil where he placed third.
The 800 metres men’s Open event will see University of Guyana track and field athlete, Wayne Harlequin, Guyana Defence Force (GDF) Devon Barrington, PPYC Kevin Bayley and Running Brave’s Cleveland Thomas competing in a four-way battle for supremacy.
Harlequin recently clocked 1:54.6 seconds at the AAG CARIFTA Trials men’s 800 metres invitational Open beating Barrington and Thomas into second and third place respectively.
Barrington ran 1:57.8 seconds and Thomas 1:57.6 seconds. Bayley, who did not compete in any invitational races at the CARIFTA Trials, has a personal best time of 1:55 seconds.
The senior athletes will have their first chance of achieving the Central American and Caribbean (CAC) Senior Track and Field Championships qualifying standard. The Championships are scheduled for July 12-14 in Trinidad and Tobago at the Hasely Crawford Stadium, Port-of-Spain.
