Je­lani Beck­les

Chair­per­son of the T&T In­ter­na­tion­al Marathon Di­ane Hen­der­son is chal­leng­ing sec­ondary schools and youth groups to come out in their num­bers at the 34th edi­tion of the event which takes place on Jan­u­ary 16 and 17, in an ef­fort to pro­duce an­oth­er Olympic ath­lete.

Next year's event in­cludes the marathon, marathon re­lay and a 5km race. At the event's press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day at the T&T Olympic House on Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain, Hen­der­son spoke about the marathon re­lay, a new edi­tion to next year's event. Hen­der­son ex­plained that each team can reg­is­ter up to six ath­letes, each run­ning 7km of the 42.16km course (26.2 miles).

Hen­der­son stat­ed that the marathon re­lay is flex­i­ble, say­ing that it is not manda­to­ry to reg­is­ter six per­sons. "These legs can be run with two per­sons if you don't have six peo­ple. This gives an in­di­vid­ual the op­por­tu­ni­ty to com­plete a half marathon be­cause two peo­ple will run three legs each."

One of the goal's of next year's marathon is to de­vel­op tal­ent­ed young­sters to reach their full po­ten­tial. "We re­alise there are a lot of groups out there oth­er than the main clubs that don't have suf­fi­cient train­ing ac­cess to coach­es. We need to link these young groups to the coach­es."

Hen­der­son be­lieves that many young ath­letes sim­ply use their nat­ur­al abil­i­ty. The marathon or­gan­is­er wants to see the young­sters times im­proved so T&T can see an­oth­er young­ster reach­ing the Olympic lev­el.

A spe­cial mo­ment at next year's race will be a trib­ute to Charles Spoon­er, an avid marathon run­ner who passed away ear­li­er this year. Spoon­er's grand­daugh­ter Ch­enelle is aim­ing to com­plete the marathon in mem­o­ry of her grand­fa­ther. Hen­der­son said the marathon com­mit­tee will as­sist Ch­enelle with her goal, as the com­mit­tee has asked an ex­pe­ri­enced dis­tance run­ner to as­sist her with prepa­ra­tions for the race.

TTIM (T&T In­ter­na­tion­al Marathon), the marathon mas­cot, will make his de­but next year. "He (TTIM) rep­re­sents a bit of our cul­ture, our pan and our colours. His legs has the pitch lake, sev­er­al parts of our mu­si­cal cul­ture and na­tion­al birds. We will bring TTIM alive in 2016. Look out for TTIM as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the T&T In­ter­na­tion­al Marathon."

More in­fo

For more in­for­ma­tion vis­it www.ttmarathon.com, check 'Trinidad and To­ba­go In­ter­na­tion­al Marathon' on face­book or con­tact 757-7772/497-5598.