T&T will not be rep­re­sent­ed at this week­end's Pan Amer­i­can Ju­nior Cham­pi­onships in Medellin, Colom­bia. The lo­cal track and field body, the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion for Ath­let­ic As­so­ci­a­tions (NAAA) had named a 20 mem­ber con­tin­gent (13 ath­letes and sev­en of­fi­cials) for the meet.

The ath­letes have been in train­ing at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in prepa­ra­tion to trav­el to Colom­bia, but NAAA sec­re­tary Al­lan Ba­boolal said the team was with­drawn be­cause of a lack of fund­ing.

"We sent a re­quest to the Sport Com­pa­ny (Sportt) about two months ago and when we did check they said they did not have funds. By then the tick­ets had to be can­celled. How­ev­er, the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Sports Ash­win Creed, called yes­ter­day (Mon­day) and in­di­cat­ed that they were try­ing to put some funds to­geth­er but it would have been too late be­cause to get flights to Pana­ma and then to Colom­bia was ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult."

Ba­boolal was speak­ing on the re­turn of the World Cham­pi­onship con­tin­gent from Moscow on Tues­day.

World Cham­pi­onships com­peti­tors Ay­o­delle Taffe and Domonique Williams, along with Carif­ta cham­pi­ons Machel Ce­de­nio and Mark Lon­don were ex­pect­ed to con­tend for medals in Medellin.

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