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Forde Focus
By Edison Jefford
The Ford Focus is almost an automatic automobile choice for race car drivers in the Caribbean. Its ability to transition
Cleveland Forde makes his move along Lamaha Street last year.
speeds and sustain pace makes it a top-ranked vehicle on racing circuits in the region. Cleveland Forde is like the Ford Focus, name and nature.
It becomes very repetitive that every time road race season comes around, Forde can be imagined shifting his gears in the latter half of the race, leaving any hint of a challenge in his shadows, and eventually cruising to what becomes comfortable and customary victories.
Forde’s Focus on Sunday at Courts fourth 10km Road Race will be mundane; it will be another addition of one of road racing most coveted titles to his cabinet, again! Forde is the four-time defending champ, and he has shown no inclination of slowing down anytime soon.
His distance-running foes will be offered a new opportunity to dethrone the local king of the road on Sunday. It’s a clichéd statement; they have been offered such opportunities in the past, but it’s no secret what became of those ambitions.
Here is a frightening, but yet impressive statistic: in the last decade, no local athlete has beaten Forde in a road race.
Undoubtedly Guyana and the Caribbean’s number one distance runner, Forde usually presses his accelerator around the 8km mark after tactically feeling out his rivals. His race acumen is almost perfect and his judgement is so clinical that he burns less fuel.
Forde relies on his tried and tested strategy that is to use the pacemakers to his advantage early in road races, and keep enough gas in his tank to up the ante in the latter half, which often leaves an incredible space between him and his opposition.
Those likely to test the focus of Forde Sunday include Cleveland Thomas, Nathaniel Giddings, Winston Missenger and a host of other athletes. But without a clear strategy against Forde, who has routinely used these races as warm-up for the much more challenging IAAF South American 10k, the result will be anyone’s guest.
The prizes for the male and female senior category include $100,000 for the winner; $75,000 for second place; $50,000 for third; $30,000 for fourth and $20,000 for fifth place. The prizes in the Masters category (Women 35 years and over and Men 40-54) are $60,000, $40,000 and $25,000 respectively.
The race will start in front of Courts’ Main Street Office, proceed north to the Seawall Road, east along the Seawall Road and continue east along Rupert Craig Highway’s northern carriageway to turn at Church Road on the Rupert Craig Highway.
It will then proceed on the Rupert Craig Highway’s southern carriageway into Kitty Public Road; south on Vlissingen Road; west on Lamaha Street, south on the eastern carriageway into Main Street, before turning around at the Cenotaph to finish on the western carriageway of Main Street in front of Courts.
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