Guyana’s bid to qualify for the 2021 edition of the Pan Cup in Trinidad and Tobago has been severely affected by the new global pandemic Coronavirus.
Guyana has not qualified for the premier Americas event for almost a decade.
To remedy the hiatus, the Guyanese were fervent in preparation to contest the Pan Am challenge – the qualifying event in Peru during July.
But the national hockey training squads which began preparations in 2019, had to halt their collective training schemes to prevent Corona contamination as they adhere to the World Health Organization’s social distancing policy.
As such, players are now limited to individual fitness and skills routines, issued by the Guyana Hockey Board (GHB).
“We had a men’s and women’s national squad in training but that training has been suspended and tapered down significantly,” President of the Board, Philip Fernandes told Stabroek Sport.
“Right now, we are trying to encourage the athletes to maintain their fitness. They are given individual fitness regimens to complete in their own time and there are a few cases where they do their training together in small clusters as we try to adhere to the usual principles of social distancing and sanitization.
“But the threat of the virus has been a big disruption to our training obviously because the team cannot meet as often as they like and we cannot do the type of training together as we need to do,” the President further explained.
Asked about the possibility of the qualifying tournament being postponed, Fernandes informed that he has been in constant contact with the Pan Am Hockey Federation. He advised that the body has not yet canceled the event.
“We are awaiting word from them (Pan Am Hockey Federation) as to whether there will be a postponement or not… as soon as we hear that, we will know how to tailor our training and adjust accordingly… but we will be in Peru once the tournament is held and everything is cleared up with the virus,” he assured.
Guyana, once the tournament remains on-stream, will take on countries from South and Central America and the Caribbean for the qualifying spot. Only the winner of the challenge will advance to the 2021 Pan Am Cup in the Twin Island Republic.
Guyana’s first match in the women’s category is slated for 1 July 2020 while the men are scheduled to swing into action the day after.
The tournament is played every four years within the Olympic cycle. Guyana’s men have never qualified for the Pan Cup while the females previously featured once during the 2013 edition of the tournament.
