Home Sports First track premiere for Feb. 6
… Everyone meets to be held in Leonora
By Jemima Holmes
The most important athletic event, the Olympics, is expected to end this year, even in the midst of the COVID-19 Pandemic. With the biggest stage in athletics in sight, it will be a busy one for the Guyana Athletic Association (AAG); this means that the local Association will have a lot on their plate if they should adequately prepare local athletes for the four-year event.
According to Guyana Athletic Association (AAG) President Aubrey Hutson, they are now tasked with adapting to the constraints of the global pandemic.
“For 2021, we are approaching track and field knowing that COVID-19 will be separate from our lives and we need to learn to live with it. It’s like until a vaccine comes up and does something miraculous for us. We just need to try to operate within COVID-19 frame work, ”
During the exclusive interview with the Guyana Times Sport, Hutson shared that consultations with the Minister for Health and Task Force COVID-19 had already been completed and a calendar drawn up.
However, the Association was forced to make some changes.
Hutson shared, “So, World Athletics would have given us a set of guidelines on how to conduct a meeting. We would have shared those guidelines with the Ministry of Health, through the COVID-19 Task Force. They approved some of our meetings as a South American 10K, while they did not approve of the grass relay. “
“Outside the Guyana Defense Force (GDF) we do not think we will have that kind of control, so in order to meet the COVID-19 Task Force we are going to try to hold all our meetings in Leonora, the AAG Boss admitted.
As it related to the initial calendar that the EAW had drawn up, Hutson noted that they were being forced to curtail some of their activities.
“We would have met together with the Minister for Health and the Head of the Task Force since then and their advice was to ‘take it down to a minimum’. Take it down to the meetings you really need to have, ”he shared.
Hutson continued saying, “We will have already put out the draft calendar on how we plan to get to Tokyo and Nairobi, Kenya; that’s for the World Junior Championships. But that had to be changed. ”
“So our new approach will be a revised calendar, with fewer events locally but once we have the benefits of free travel, we would see more of our athletes enter international competition and test their skills out there to prepare for Tokyo and on. ”
Expressing his intention to give athletes a route to Tokyo and Nairobi for the World Junior Championships, Hutson shared the inaugural event on the athletic calendar.
“So, the 6th and 7th of February, we’ll start with our developmental meeting on the track and then do another on the 20th and 21st. It’s sad that we can’t go out to the grass to meet anyone because of our fear of failing to control the crowd, ”the EA President revealed.
As it stands, EAW is set to hold a third developmental meeting in February, scheduled for the 27th and 28th. Thereafter, the National Senior Championships will be held on April 17 and 18 and the South American Senior Championships are slated for May 14 to 16.
