The two standouts from MacKenzie High School recorded sprint doubles yesterday in familiar record breaking fashion at the National Track and Field Centre to ensure the Linden track and field outfit heads into today’s finale with a firm grip on the trophy for this year’s National Schools Cycling, Swimming and Track and Field Championships.
One day after rewriting the record books in the marquee 100m events, the dynamic duo highlighted the penultimate day of the championships by besting the competition and recording new standards for their respective age group events in the 200m.
For Williams (U-18), the World Youth 400m silver medalist and Skeete (U-16), a 400m gold medalist at the recent South America Youth Games, the only competition was the clock, which they both bettered.
Running out of lane three, Williams exploded out of the blocks, ran a sublime curve and stormed further ahead on the home straight to finish the half-lap event in 21.78s. The previous record was 22.0s set by Jason Yaw four years ago.
Lionel Marks of West Coast Berbice finished second in 22.0s, while Umkosi Vancooten (South Georgetown) snared the bronze in 22.89s.
Skeete was also in record breaking mode and easily lowered her previous mark of 25.3s, whilst clocking 24.97s. The technically sound Skeete led Brianna Charles (26.0s) of North Georgetown and Binka Joseph (26.19s) of West Demerara onto the podium.
After blowing away their rivals in their less favored 100m and 200m events in record time, the two athletes are poised to complete sprint trebles when they contest their ‘pet’ event, the 400m today.
1500m
While the District 10 sprinters dominated the 200m events, some of their middle distance mates made hay in the sunshine in their 1500m races.
U-18 Ronell Newton (4m: 23:65s) and U-16 Murphy Nash (4m: 21:50s) both rewrote the record books.
The previous records were held by Ernesto Thomas (4m:24:8s) and Jamal Johnson (4m:26:5s)
In the field, Chantoba Bright (District 10) who set a new long jump record, quietly set a new U-18 high jump record at a height of 1.57m. Tatyanna Blair had set the previous mark of 1.55m two years ago.
Following the completion of 93 events, as of yesterday, Upper Demerara/ Kwakwani are the runaway leaders 521 with points. District Three trails in second place on 359 points while District 13 is in third position on 335 points.
The final day of the championships will be highlighted with the 400m individual events, the cycle road races, various relays and the prize giving ceremony.
Action is set to start at 10:00hrs.
