Sean Nero

It will cost the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ics Ad­min­is­tra­tions (NAAA) $1.5 mil­lion to stage this month's se­ries of track and field events, says Al­lan Ba­boolal, chair­man of the Games Com­mit­tee.

For­tu­nate­ly for the na­tion­al sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion, cor­po­rate T&T ful­filled its pledge to part­ner with the aim of hon­ing the skills of the fu­ture Olympians.

State-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) signed as the ti­tle spon­sored for the Na­tion­al Ju­nior Cham­pi­onships which took place last week­end, the Ju­ve­nile Na­tion­al Cham­pi­onships sched­uled for this week­end and the Com­bined Na­tion­al Cham­pi­onships ad­ver­tised to take place on be­tween June 21 and 22. NGC shares the spot­light with in­sur­er Sagi­cor at the Na­tion­al Open Cham­pi­onships a week lat­er.

But that's not where the list of good cor­po­rate cit­i­zens ends. Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sor Lim­it­ed (PPG­PL) a sub­sidiary of NGC, state-owned Petrotrin and Blue Wa­ters have part­nered with the NAAA, too, and this has helped made our 2015 pro­gramme of ac­tiv­i­ties pos­si­ble.

Ba­boolal, who holds the post of sec­re­tary on the NAAA ex­ec­u­tive, said the bud­get for last week­end's NGC/NAAA Na­tion­al Ju­nior Cham­pi­onships, held at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Wood­brook, was an es­ti­mat­ed $178,000.

The first leg in the planned four con­sec­u­tive-week­end of ac­tion saw sprint­er Jonathon Far­in­ha, of Abi­lene Wild­cats com­plete a dou­ble in the un­der-20 boys 100m and 200m re­spec­tive­ly. In the process he achieved the qual­i­fy­ing time for the Ju­nior Pan Amer­i­can Games in Ed­mon­ton, Cana­da, this Ju­ly. Mean­while, while Carif­ta triple medal­ist Akan­ni His­lop of Zenith suc­cess­ful­ly de­fend­ed his boy's U-18 100m crown to se­cure qual­i­fi­ca­tion in the World Youth Cham­pi­onships to be held in Cali, Colom­bia, next month. His time was 10.48 sec­onds.

The com­pe­ti­tion sched­ule was ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue this week­end with the NGC/NAAA Na­tion­al Ju­ve­nile Cham­pi­onships at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Wood­brook. The bud­get for that pro­duc­tion is $100,000.

Ba­boolal said, "The bud­get for the NGC/Sagi­cor Open Cham­pi­onships has in­creased to $678,000; rel­a­tive­ly small com­pared to what oth­er events may have got­ten and prob­a­bly not pro­duced the cal­i­bre of events. The NGC/NAAA Com­bined Cham­pi­onships is un­der $100,000."

But ef­forts to get the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T (SporTT) on board with the NAAA had not gone as seam­less in com­par­i­son to the re­la­tion­ship the na­tion­al sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion en­joyed with its cor­po­rate part­ners.

The Games Com­mit­tee un­der­took re­pair work on two sets of hur­dles. It was dis­cov­ered that the new­er sets were not as durable as the ones re­placed. The NAAA had them all re­fur­bished.

"Since the Open Cham­pi­onships is the on­ly one that goes in­to the evening, the re­quest from the call room ref­er­ee Dawn Wash­ing­ton is to see what we can do with the lights. Now, we spoke to the SporTT Com­pa­ny. If noth­ing is forth­com­ing then the NAAA have to do some­thing. So we have al­ready en­gaged an elec­tri­cian to fix the lights that are over the warm up tracks. We have writ­ten to the SporTT Com­pa­ny ask­ing them to re-lay the warm up track. Over the years, we have the is­sue of Richard Thomp­son and Ke­ston Bled­man and Mar­cus Dun­can and all these guys not warm­ing up on the warm-up track; so we have to use the back straight, which is not the best, be­cause you want com­peti­tors on­ly in the are­na," Ba­boolal said.

He added, "We al­ways have the is­sue with the fo­cus­ing of the lights. They shift it for foot­ball. Pho­to-fin­ish and dark­ness are not friends. We need lights. If it can­not be fixed we are go­ing to in­stall some tem­po­rary lights."