The T&T In­ter­na­tion­al Marathon (TTIM) Com­mit­tee faces a ma­jor chal­lenge from run­ners fol­low­ing yes­ter­day's event. TTIM faces a pos­si­ble law­suit for changes to its prize struc­ture a few days be­fore yes­ter­day's run­ning.

At the fin­ish-line yes­ter­day,a num­ber of dis­grun­tled run­ners vent­ed their dis­gust over the changes. An­tho­ny Nero, fa­ther of T&T's Tonya Nero, who was sec­ond in the women's cat­e­go­ry, promised to de­liv­er a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to the or­gan­is­ers if his daugh­ter did not get the cash prize she agreed to run for when she reg­is­tered to com­pete.

Up un­til the fin­ish of yes­ter­day's race, run­ners were still un­sure of the cash prizes, as or­gan­is­ers made sev­er­al crit­i­cal changes to the struc­ture of the cash in­cen­tives, cit­ing the down­turn in the econ­o­my.

Ac­cord­ing to fly­er used to ad­ver­tise the race, the win­ners in the men's cat­e­go­ry was set to re­ceive $23,000 for the win, $17,000 for sec­ond, $13,600 for third, $6,800 for fourth and $5,100 for fifth, but yes­ter­day or­gan­is­ers were still try­ing to de­ter­mine how to split the prizes from a bare bud­get. The over­all cost to host the event was not dis­closed.

Di­ane Hen­der­son, chair­man of the TTIM com­mit­tee, paint­ed a bleak pic­ture stat­ing that the or­gan­is­ers have to pro­duce the event from noth­ing, and called on par­tic­i­pants to be un­der­stand­ing.

She point­ed that out her or­gan­i­sa­tion is in the red and it has been that way for a long time now, and called on run­ners to be pa­tient.

How­ev­er, the se­nior Nero, who him­self was a stand-out mid­dle-to-long dis­tance run­ner in his hey day, told Guardian Me­dia his daugh­ter's reg­is­tra­tion was done based on a num­ber of fac­tors, in­clud­ing the prize monies that were of­fered. "She could have gone else­where in the world to run yes­ter­day, but in­stead she con­sid­ered what was be­ing of­fered here in T&T and made her de­ci­sion."

He claimed: "The event is an in­ter­na­tion­al event which in­vites run­ners from all over the world, mean­ing they are invit­ing pro­fes­sion­als to the event. You can­not treat pro­fes­sion­al ath­letes that way. I do not want to hear about down­turn in the econ­o­my now as this should have been dis­cussed long be­fore the event was staged. You can­not wait un­til a day or so be­fore an event to change the prize struc­ture."

Nero's fears were wors­ened af­ter the 5K run­ners re­vealed the win­ning prize for the race on Sat­ur­day was an em­bar­rass­ing $300, which was a re­duc­tion of $1200 from the amount be­ing ad­ver­tised ahead of the race. Li­onel Dan­drade, a Guyanese run­ner who re­sides in T&T, did not take part in this week­end's events. He has vowed nev­er to take part in the TTIM 5K or re­lays as there was some­thing fun­da­men­tal­ly wrong with the man­age­ment of the event.

Ac­cord­ing to Dan­drade, he pulled out since last year as he re­ceived far less than what he com­pet­ed for. This year's 5K car­ried a prize struc­ture of $1,500 for the win­ner, $1,000 sec­ond, $700 third and $500 for fourth etc, but fol­low­ing Sat­ur­day's event the top fin­ish­ers got $300, $200 and $100 for first, sec­ond and third, re­spec­tive­ly.

Wal­ter Al­ibey­wal­ter.al­ibey@guardian.co.tt