Lessons to learn after CARIFTA success

Apr 20, 2017 Sports

Aubrey Hutson

By Edison Jefford
The Athletics Association of Guyana (AAG) has another opportunity to end the proliferation of its inability to transition talented and promising athletes to the next level with the success of the CARIFTA Games team last weekend in Curacao.
For the record, it is not the first time Guyana has succeeded at the CARIFTA Games. Guyanese athletes have been doing well at the Caribbean’s most prestigious junior Championship for some time without any of them being able to transition to senior international success.
Guyana has gone down in the annals of history again at the 2017 Games, garnering eight medals, which include four gold, one silver and three bronze from a team of 12 athletes. Compton Caesar did what no other Guyanese male sprinter was able to do. He won the signature 100m gold medal of the CARIFTA Games.
As if that was not enough, Caesar went on to demonstrate his authenticity with a bronze medal in the 200m; the other three gold medals came from Chantoba Bright (Long Jump), United States-based Natricia Hooper (Triple Jump) and Claudrice McKoy (3000m).
In addition, Bright and McKoy also won bronze medals, while Anfernee Headecker (1500m) won a silver medal. Guyana’s medals came from five of the 12 athletes in Curacao where the country was able to carve out a fifth place finish overall of 17 countries.
The other athletes were Daniel Williams (200m, LJ) Tarique Boyle (High Jump), Samuel Lynch (800m), Matthew McKenzie (5000m), Kenisha Phillips (100, 200m), Onasha Rogers (100m) and Tremaine Browne (Long, Triple Jump).
Now that these athletes have performed as so many others before them had done, a big challenge for the athletics association is to ensure that these athletes make the conversion to the next level according to a development plan, which unfortunately has been non-existent.
President of the association, Aubrey Hutson had promised on live national television to deliver a development plan for athletes. To-date, he has been unable to fulfill that promise, but the success of these athletes now demands the implementation of such a programme.
We have been here before where an obviously talented athlete or group of athletes surfaces in an era, but nothing is done to ensure they go on to greater success. The athletics association must be receptive to the lessons of Kadecia Baird and so many others. United States-based, Baird was second at the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) World Junior Championships in 2012 in Barcelona, Spain. Baird was 17 at the time and ran 51.04 seconds. Bahamian, Shaunae Miller was fourth in that race.
However, four years after, Miller is a 400m Olympic Champion with the now famous ‘dive across’ the finish line. Miller is also a silver medallist from the 2015 World Championships, while Baird did not go on to maximise the early potential she showed. It was hardly her fault. Baird did not get the support she deserved from the athletics association, which is the main affiliate of the Guyana Olympic Association (GOA). Together, they contrived to produce very little, if anything at all, for Baird, who is now in College regaining the form that made her a world beater five years ago. We can look before Baird at the potential that fell by the wayside because Guyana is still without a World Championship or Olympic medal. Guyana is still without overwhelming athletic success at the Central America and Caribbean (CAC), and Pan American Games, though we have picked up medals there through Marian Burnett, Aliann Pompey and James Wren Gilkes.
Perhaps, Guyana’s highest achievement in athletics remains Pompey’s Commonwealth gold and silver medals. This is not to say that we have not had the talent to produce much more. It is rather an indictment on the administration of the sport to produce the development plan and programme that will ensure the transition of athletes.
Guyana has had many CARIFTA Games successes before, including 800m prodigy, Tai Payne. In the most recent history, there were multiple gold medallists, Jevina Straker and Cassey George among other medallists, but they were all left alone to navigate the world of athletics without any substantive and deliberate effort to develop their ability.
Without an intentional arrangement to ensure that Caesar and others appear in contention for medals in Osaka, Japan at the 2020 Olympic Games, Guyana will continue to come up short on the biggest platform. With the CARIFTA Games over, the focus is now on what happens next.

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