The host­ing of next year’s Carif­ta Games is up in lim­bo af­ter the 2026 host Guyana with­drew, leav­ing the Games, dubbed the most im­por­tant ju­nior ath­let­ic Games in the world by Lord Sabastien Coe, pres­i­dent of World Ath­let­ics, the gov­ern­ing body for track and field, dur­ing his ad­dress to ath­letes at the open­ing of the 52nd Games at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Port-of-Spain on Fri­day.

It is not clear why Guyana has with­drawn from host­ing, how­ev­er, Grena­da has sig­nalled its in­ten­tion to host yes­ter­day via a state­ment of sub­mis­sion.

The state­ment in part reads: “The Grena­da Ath­let­ic As­so­ci­a­tion (GAA) sub­mit­ted an in­ter­est to host the 2026 Carif­ta Games. The re­quest of in­tent to host was ex­pressed at the Carif­ta Con­gress held in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“The GAA’s de­ci­sion to ren­der the in­tent was as a re­sult of Guyana’s with­draw­al from host­ing in 2026 and the lack of in­ter­est by mem­ber fed­er­a­tions. While we have in­di­cat­ed our in­tent, it is im­por­tant to note that there are es­tab­lished process­es and pa­ra­me­ters that must be fol­lowed and met be­fore any of­fi­cial con­fir­ma­tion can be grant­ed by NACAC. This in­cludes a de­tailed bid doc­u­ment in­clu­sive of the com­mit­ment of key stake­hold­ers.”

On April 2, 2024, a Kai­eteur News re­port stat­ed that the Ath­let­ics As­so­ci­a­tion of Guyana (AAG) has ex­pressed in­ter­est in host­ing the Carif­ta Games in 2026, as re­vealed by Michael Sands, pres­i­dent of the North Amer­i­can, Cen­tral Amer­i­can, and Caribbean Ath­let­ic As­so­ci­a­tion (NACAC).

Sands dis­closed that bids were opened last year (2023) in the Ba­hamas for the host­ing of the next three games.

Suc­cess­ful bids were award­ed to Grena­da (2024), Trinidad and To­ba­go (2025), and Bar­ba­dos (2026). How­ev­er, Bar­ba­dos re­cent­ly with­drew their bid of­fer due to fa­cil­i­ty readi­ness is­sues, prompt­ing a re­open­ing of bids.

Sands stat­ed, “As a re­sult, we re­opened bids, and thus far, Guyana has ex­pressed in­ter­est.” He fur­ther high­light­ed that Guyana now has a win­dow of 30 to 90 days to for­mal­ly ex­press their in­ter­est.

To be con­sid­ered se­ri­ous­ly, Sands said that the AAG needs to pro­vide a let­ter from the Gov­ern­ment of Guyana or a guar­an­tor of spon­sor­ship, af­ter which their doc­u­men­ta­tion will then un­der­go full rat­i­fi­ca­tion by the coun­cil.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, in 2019, it was an­nounced by NACAC that Guyana would host the 50th edi­tion of the Games in 2022, lat­er resched­uled to 2023 due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

How­ev­er, host­ing rights were ul­ti­mate­ly re­lin­quished af­ter bids were re­opened.

In Jan­u­ary 2020, key NACAC of­fi­cials con­duct­ed a site vis­it at the Na­tion­al Track and Field Fa­cil­i­ty, West Coast De­mer­ara, where they stressed the ne­ces­si­ty for re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion works on the track’s sur­face and oth­er im­prove­ments.

In Oc­to­ber 2023, the resur­fac­ing of the syn­thet­ic track was suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed at a cost of G$77 mil­lion.

Asked if Trinidad and To­ba­go would be in a po­si­tion to host next year’s Games hav­ing just con­clud­ed the 2025 edi­tion, Ephraim Ser­rette, the pres­i­dent of the NAAA, said, “It’s not a bad idea hav­ing just host­ed a suc­cess­ful Games, but a lot of dis­cus­sions and plan­ning have to take place first be­fore T&T can sig­nal its in­tent, and that would take a few months. The post-mortem for this one is still to be done. Host­ing the Carif­ta Games is a very cost­ly project that can cost an es­ti­mat­ed US$1.5 mil­lion, a large por­tion of which goes to­wards tele­vi­sion broad­casts, which are very im­por­tant for the three-day meet­ing.”

<T&T fin­ish­es third again>

Mean­while, for the sec­ond year run­ning, Ja­maica, the Ba­hamas and Trinidad and To­ba­go emerged at the top of the medal stand­ings af­ter three days of fierce com­pe­ti­tion that in­volved 28 coun­tries and 600 ath­letes.

Ja­maica was pre­dictably crowned over­all cham­pi­ons with 78 medals, six less than the 84 they cap­tured at last year’s Games in Grena­da.

This time around, they cap­tured 30 gold, 27 sil­ver and 21 bronze, com­pared to the 45 gold, 23 sil­ver and 16 bronze medals last year.

There was sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment by sec­ond-placed Ba­hamas, which al­most dou­bled their gold medal tal­ly of nine from 2024 to 16 on their way to col­lect­ing 37 medals (16 gold, 13 sil­ver and eight bronze).

Trinidad and To­ba­go fin­ished third over­all for the sec­ond year run­ning, with their nine gold medals, more than dou­bling the four they won in Grena­da to fin­ish with 25 (nine gold, six sil­ver, and ten bronze). Trinidad and To­ba­go se­cured ten medals on Sun­day night—two gold, two sil­ver and five bronze medals—to match a sim­i­lar feat they en­joyed in the Cay­man Is­lands in 2019 be­fore end­ing with 24 medals.

How­ev­er, this year’s per­for­mance was two medals shy of the 27 won (four gold, 11 sil­ver and 12 bronze) in Grena­da last year, to­geth­er with long jumper Janae De­Gannes win­ning the cov­et­ed Austin Seal award for her record-break­ing per­for­mance in the event.

Grena­da, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, St Lu­cia, the Cay­man Is­lands and the US Vir­gin Is­lands all end­ed the Games with two gold medals, while Bar­ba­dos and Aru­ba each earned one gold medal to round out the top ten.

<Dou­ble record-break­er Kennedy is Austin Sealy award win­ner>

Ja­maica’s dou­ble record break­er Ka­mari Kennedy was named win­ner of the Austin Sealy Award, pre­sent­ed to the most out­stand­ing ath­lete, at the Carif­ta Games.

The 16-year-old smashed the records in the un­der-17 boys’ shot put and dis­cus throw events as Ja­maica topped the medals ta­ble for the 39th straight time and 47th over­all with a haul of 78 medals.

On Sun­day, Kennedy threw 18.90m to win the shot put, the tenth best mark in the world for un­der-18 men, break­ing the Carif­ta record of 18.80m set by fel­low Ja­maican Javon­tae Smith in Grena­da last year.

On Mon­day, Kennedy un­leashed a mas­sive 60.87-me­tre ef­fort in the dis­cus throw, more than sev­en me­tres bet­ter than the 53.32 me­tres set in 2019 by an­oth­er Ja­maican, Kobe Lawrence.

Ja­maica’s Shanoya Dou­glas was one of two ath­letes to win four gold medals, along with the Ba­hamas’ Ea­gan Neely, as she won the un­der-20 girls sprint dou­ble and was part of both 4x100m and 4x400m re­lays that won gold medals.

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s mid­dle dis­tance run­ner Christo­pher Sam­my cap­tured two gold medals when he won the boys’ un­der-17 1,500 me­tres in 4:09.65 sec­onds and the 3,000 me­tres run in 9:11.51 sec­onds.