WAL­TER AL­IBEY

T&T's Tonya will be hop­ing to cap­i­talise on the ab­sence of de­fend­ing women's cham­pi­on Car­o­line Kip­too of Kenya when the 13th edi­tion of the UWI In­ter­na­tion­al Half Marathon takes place, to­day, 5.30 am from the UWI Sports and Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion Cen­tre to La Re­source Junc­tion and back on the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route.

Kip­too, who pro­duced a quick time to be crowned cham­pi­on last year, pulled out of the race two days ago due to in­jury. Yes­ter­day Nero said she rel­ish­es the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be among the top run­ners and the ab­sence of Kip­too will pro­vide a chance of that hap­pen­ing. The slim-built Nero was sec­ond last year in one hour and 17 min­utes and hopes to bet­ter that.

"I want to achieve my goal of run­ning un­der 1:17 and this year my times have been good so I feel con­fi­dent of achiev­ing that. At the Prairie Half Marathon in the Unit­ed States re­cent­ly, I ran one hour and 17 min­utes and in the morn­ing I am hop­ing to go faster than that," Nero said.

Her ef­fort to stop the dom­i­na­tion by the in­ter­na­tion­al run­ners last year failed but she will have to con­tend with last year's third place Yel­sy Al­varez of Venezuela and new­com­er Chris­tine Lau­rence of Guade­loupe, whose im­pres­sive show at the NACAC Half Marathon re­cent­ly, will be some­thing for Nero to con­sid­er.

Nero and com­pa­ny from T&T have been of­fered a $5,000 in­cen­tive to break the 1:17.10 sec­onds bar­ri­er to­day, which is in ad­di­tion to a whop­ping $50,000 mon­e­tary award for break­ing the na­tion­al mid­dle dis­tance record, be­ing of­fered by Finnish In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny- Mexa­dia.

The event, be­ing spon­sored by First Cit­i­zens, has al­so in­creased its win­nings for the run­ners, giv­ing the top women's and men's run­ners US$2,500 in­stead of the US$2,000 of­fered last year.

Mean­while T&T men's run­ners have al­so re­ceived an in­cen­tive of $5,000 for break­ing a bar­ri­er of 1:10, which is sep­a­rate from the $50,000 from Mexa­dia for a new na­tion­al record.

Race di­rec­tor Ma­jor David Ben­jamin said the in­cen­tives were of­fered to help im­prove the per­for­mances and times of lo­cal run­ners. This year vet­er­an run­ner Cur­tis Cox will again lead the lo­cal con­tin­gent, with the promis­ing Richard Jones hop­ing to spring a sur­prise, as well as Matthew Ha­gley of the T&T De­fence Force, among many oth­ers.

How­ev­er, it will be no easy task as de­fend­ing cham­pi­on Rich­er Perez of Cu­ba is al­ready back and aim­ing at a re­peat, along with Alex­is Pe­na who was third last year, Ja­maica's Ru­pert Green and debu­tants Pe­ter Ny­ka and Hillary Too of Kenya.

To­day's 13th edi­tion will pro­duce the largest field of run­ners at 1,338 which for the first time, will al­so com­prise run­ners from 10 sec­ondary schools as Queen's Roy­al Col­lege (QRC), To­co Sec­ondary, Trin­i­ty Col­lege East, Holy Cross Col­lege and Hillview Col­lege, among oth­ers.

Ac­cord­ing to Ma­jor Ben­jamin, the event has al­so part­nered with the Di­a­betes As­so­ci­a­tion this year and or­gan­is­ers have al­ready raised over $15,000 from the run­ners alone. This amount will be pre­sent­ed to the as­so­ci­a­tion to­day.