Guyana experimented with IGG Athletics team

Apr 02, 2010 Sports

---

– approach backfired, led to underperformance

By Edison Jefford
Guyana’s below-par performance in the Athletics competition of the Inter-Guiana Games (IGG) cannot be squarely attributed to the Athletics Association of Guyana (AAG), but it must not be spared serious introspection over the result.
Perhaps, the best explanation given for Guyana’s lost so far is the one that coach, Lyndon Wilson gave this newspaper at the Baduel Stadium in Cayenne, French Guiana on the last day of the Athletics competition when the title slipped.
Wilson said that Guyana is in transition and lots of the top junior athletes that were left at home will be entering the senior ranks next year, meaning that it would have been a final run at IGG for them, which would have left a huge void next year.
The athletics coach believed that the experiment with sending a young team to the Games was a good decision given the fact that many of them got exposure, which will serve their participation for the country in the future very well.
Wilson was basically indicating that he believes that Guyana is in transition with most of the top junior athletes on the brink of crossing the senior border. It was an acceptable one, but considering a title was at stake, it was also dangerous trial.
The coach had stated in this newspaper that Guyana will win the event, which meant that he had no qualms about the strength of the team. However, Wilson’s admission that there was always that ‘transition’ concern makes scope for critical analysis.
Guyana went to the meet with a string of young, talented unknowns and left their premier athletes at home for several reasons. Prominent among the explanations was that some of the athletes were not attending school while others opted out.
The AAG did the right thing when they followed the protocol of the IGG event, which is that athletes competing must be attending school as the Games has an academic function also. The association followed the rules and cannot be faulted.
But one wonders still if the composition that went to the Games was the best that Guyana could have offered in an era where junior athletics is superior to other groups. The AAG will do a post mortem but here are some pre-emptive issues.
Suriname’s Llsida Toemere won both the female1500m and 3000m races while her team- mate, Diko Genelva won the 800m event with no real challenges. Adama Roberts, Andrea Gibson, Tisha Grimes and Carlissa Atkinson were Guyana’s choices for distance and middle distance races.
The four athletes surfaced for the tour after Jenella Jonas and Jevina Straker-the country’s two leading distance and middle distance female junior athletes – were omitted for separate reasons that were less than convincing in the circumstances.
Jonas was reportedly not attending school and Straker chose to compete at the CARIFTA Games meet that start tomorrow in the Cayman Islands. Both athletes are on the team that left for the Cayman Islands early Wednesday morning.
Comparatively, these two athletes would have swept the top two places in all the distance and middle distance events at the Guiana Games. The reasons for them not being on their country’s IGG team must be more serious than the ones given.
Both of them placed the AAG in an awkward position. It did not stop at them, however, it was a proliferation of such developments that cost Guyana the IGG Athletics title. In fact, only sprinter, Chavez Ageday could have a legitimate pardon.
The sprint ace went to the South American Under-23 Games where he made both the 100 and 200m finals in Columbia. Ageday won both events at the local IGG trials. The AAG was at their wits’ end to find proper replacements for him.
In the end, Shawn Semple, Franken Mercurius and Stefan James surfaced. However, their potencies were significantly diminished by of the Surinamese especially. Given his recent form, Ageday would have won both the 100 and 200m.
Ageday has times of 10.5 seconds in the 100m and 21.7 in the 200m. The 100m was won in 10.7 and the 200m in 21.9 at the Guiana Games. Continuing with logical deductions, it would not be far fetched to say that Ageday was the best choice.
Okeme Stewart was not even given a nod-reason being, he was not in school. Then there was the case of Nadine Rodrigues, who won both the 200m and 400m races at the trials, which was held to select Guyana’s representatives to the Games.
Stewart and Rodrigues are reportedly in the Felix Austin Police College, which should be enough to get them on the team because it is a school, but yet they were ignored and then the realities of the competition placed Guyana out of contention.
The question must therefore be asked if Guyana sent its best athletics team to IGG and if not, are the reasons given to the media enough to exonerate the country from attempting a selection of its best team regardless of the stature of competition.
Suriname, who won the athletics title Guyana had not lost since 1993, believe that it was underestimation that cost Guyana.
Given the revelations that there were a school of better athletes, Suriname may very be right with that assessment.

---

---