Latest update February 20th, 2025 6:53 AM
Athletes need to transition to greater performances
-Says Boyce, as he congratulates IGG team
By Edison Jefford
President of the Athletics Association of Guyana (AAG), Colin Boyce believes that the time has come for the implementation of necessary auxiliary systems that will ensure Guyana’s top junior athletes transition into more notable global performances.
Boyce was speaking to Kaieteur Sport yesterday where he congratulated the Inter-Guiana Games (IGG) junior national team for recapturing the coveted title. He said that the athletes proved with the necessary support they can produce
Colin Boyce
greater performances.
“We need to start paying attention to these athletes so that they can maximise their true potential on the track. There is a range of things that need to be put in place, so that we do not lose what is obviously an excellent crop of junior athletes,” Boyce indicated.
“We need to identify a group of athletes, have them encamped and have several physiotherapists, nutritionists and specialist coaches assigned to them where they will be able to train and perform exclusive of worrying about those things,” he continued.
Guyana sent its best team to the IGG in Suriname last weekend, according to Boyce, who said it was a deliberate method to re-affirm Guyana’s dominance in the sport at the Games. He said that he had no doubt that the team would have won emphatically.
“I had given a mandate to ensure all our best athletes compete at the Games that is why we had the trials. I told them to pull all stops and ensure Guyana come out on top and they did that; I’m proud of them, but we have to take it a step further,” he said.
“We have athletes like (Jevina) Sampson, (Andrea) Foster and (Melissa) Byass coming through to join forces with those like Stephan James, Jevina Straker and Chavez Ageday, just to name a few; we cannot let them slip by, we have to support them,” Boyce added.
The AAG President was of the view that a systematic development junior programme where the corporate community is actively involved will tremendously help those athletes realise the talent that was glaringly on show in Suriname last weekend.
He said that there are other major competitions namely the Pan American Juniors; World Youth Championships; CARIFTA Games and South American Juniors that Guyana has to start bringing home more medals from than just the occasional solo effort.
Boyce said that track and field has consistently put Guyana on the global front and as a result, it ought to benefit from more support from Government. He observed that without the involvement of key stakeholders, Guyana cannot transition to greater performances.
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