GTU holds emergency meeting over Schools’ C/ships

Nov 25, 2008 Sports

– official results may not be released

Colwyn King

By Edison Jefford
Chinua Achebe’s book, “Things Fall Apart”, comes to mind whenever the 2008 National Schools’ Championships is conceived since, from an ideal beginning, the event’s climax could be questioned to the point of extinction.

The indicators that signalled the annulling of the event from the permanent records of the Guyana Teachers’ Union (GTU), after hundreds witnessed a pulsating opening ceremony in Linden, flashed uncontrollably yesterday.

As such, an emergency meeting was set for today and officials will determine the validity of the results of the 2008 championships. A resolution to not release any official result of the Games could be one of the likely outcomes.

GTU President, Colwyn King told Kaieteur Sport yesterday via telephone that instead of pushing for the release of the results, declaring the official winner of the championships, GTU will make some tough decisions.

“We are not going to release any results; we will be making some decisions. We want to really deal with this issue very strong,” King said.

The GTU President added that he has come to the realisation that the “irregularities” were not genuine mistakes. “I was prepared to let them (irregularities) go as genuine mistakes but that has since changed,” he informed.

King had expressed disappointment in the Local Organising Committee in Linden over their management of the Games. He reiterated that position yesterday, stating that various issues will be addressed at the meeting.

However, Upper Demerara is adamant that they have won the overall title and an article in another section of the print media yesterday supported that belief, which can be upheld because of their athletics dominance.

The overall champion is determined based on districts’ placement in the track and field, cycling and swimming competitions. Only five cycling events were completed this year as opposed to the other two disciplines.

North Georgetown won swimming, Upper Demerara was on course to win athletics and the cycling competition was inclusive, which leaves GTU in a quandary to determine who won the overall championship.
The article suggested that Chairman of GTU’s Sports Committee, Seon Bristol released the results Friday night. If Bristol did release the results, he did so either unilaterally, under duress or without the consent of GTU.

This newspaper queried with Bristol in Linden on Saturday as to the status of the results and he rightly informed that GTU has to meet before the results can be released because of the issues facing its authenticity.

The complaints of unfair judgements during the event, which took place at the Mackenzie Sports Club ground last week, reached saturation point Thursday afternoon when the City districts gyrated onto the field in protest.

The remonstration took place during the 100m finals, prompting an untimely and adverse cancellation of the day’s proceedings.

The event felt the effects of the cancellation since most of the finals had to be cramped into Friday.
From the superlative beginning, the much–anticipated championships could end up in the rubbish bin of GTU.

If that happens, then the spectacular opening ceremony would have been in vain and thousands of hearts broken.

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