Rachael Thom­spon-King

Mak­ing the qual­i­fy­ing stan­dards will be of ut­most im­por­tance at this week­end's Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion for Ath­let­ic Ad­min­is­tra­tions (NAAA) Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC)/Sagi­cor Se­nior Cham­pi­onships, where T&T's elite track and field ath­letes will get to prove they have what it takes to com­pete against the best the world has to of­fer at the Olympic Games in Rio de Janiero in Brazil.

They will de­scend on the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo, from Fri­day to Sun­day, with the ul­ti­mate goal of join­ing box­er Nigel Paul, cy­clist Njisane Phillip, swim­mer George Bovell, sailor An­drew Lewis row­er Fe­lice Chow and ju­do fight­er Christo­pher George, who all have al­ready qual­i­fied for the pre­mier sport­ing event set for Au­gust 5-21.

In or­der to be el­i­gi­ble to com­pete, they must be as good or bet­ter than the set mark in their re­spec­tive events and a max­i­mum of three ath­letes per in­di­vid­ual Olympic event is al­lowed, pro­vid­ed they have all met the en­try stan­dard ac­cord­ing to NAAA pres­i­dent Ephraim Ser­rette.

"Every­body has to com­pete," he said. "There will be no ex­emp­tions as has hap­pened in the past. All must go through the en­tire process through all the rounds (pre­lim­i­nary/semi­fi­nals/fi­nals) where nec­es­sary."

It will be a high-pres­sure and now-or-nev­er com­pe­ti­tion ul­ti­mate­ly, so ath­letes must come good and be ready come open­ing day, when three fi­nals are card­ed in the men's and women's ham­mer throw and the men's 10,000 me­tres.

How­ev­er as per usu­al the sprint events ear­ly rounds will al­so high­light the evening's ac­tion with in the 100, 200, 400 and 110m hur­dles events. En­try fee is $25 on Fri­day. The fol­low­ing two days will cost $50 to en­ter.

The se­lec­tion of T&T ath­letes has in the past, caused some con­tention but Ser­rette as­sured that the process will be clear and pre­cise.

Ser­rette said: "The se­lec­tion pol­i­cy has been re­vised. It will be sim­i­lar to the British sys­tem where the first two past the line pro­vid­ed that they have achieved the nec­es­sary qual­i­fy­ing stan­dard, will au­to­mat­i­cal­ly qual­i­fy to rep­re­sent T&T."

There is one ma­jor change on the pro­gramme and it will af­fect the quar­ter­mil­ers.

"The 100m and 400m sprint fi­nals nor­mal­ly draw the crowds on the Sat­ur­day and we want­ed to hold more at­ten­tion on the fi­nal day so the 400m fi­nal will be the high­light on the Sun­day," said Ser­rette.

An­oth­er ma­jor change ex­pect­ed at the an­nu­al meet is that ath­letes from over­seas will al­so com­pete.

"There will be ath­letes from a few coun­tries com­pet­ing. The for­eign­ers will com­pete in a B fi­nal while T&T ath­letes will con­test the A fi­nal," said Ser­rette.

The Cham­pi­onships bring to­geth­er the top com­pet­ing T&T ath­letes to bat­tle it out to not on­ly be­come the na­tion­al cham­pi­on in their event but this be­ing an Olympic year, to book a spot to com­pete in Rio 2016.

The star stud­ded line up will in­clude mul­ti­ple Olympic medal­lists Richard Thomp­son and Ke­ston Bled­man along with Michelle-Lee Ahye, Kel­ly-Ann Bap­tiste, Je­hue Gor­don, Machel Ce­de­nio, who has been mak­ing waves this sea­son thus far. In the field events will be reign­ing Olympic javelin cham­pi­ons Keshorn Wal­cott and five-time "Sports­woman of the Year" shot put­ter Cleopa­tra Borel.

The event is the per­fect op­por­tu­ni­ty for all to come out and be in­spired by some of T&T's finest ath­letes.

With some 38 na­tion­al ti­tles up for grabs, the cham­pi­onships promis­es to be an ex­cit­ing week­end of track and field ac­tion.