Yvonne Webb

Oneil Odel, 21, was crowned King of the Rock-the 2012 Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Stick-fight­ing Cham­pi­on-ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing in Ma­yaro.

There were dou­ble cel­e­bra­tions in Odel's com­mu­ni­ty of Sixth Com­pa­ny, Moru­ga, as he and his broth­ers, Ronald, and Don­ald Lewis, known as the Valiant Broth­ers, were al­so de­clared King of the Gayelle in the same com­pe­ti­tion. The two cat­e­go­ry fi­nals, held un­der the aus­pices of the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­pe­ti­tion (NCC), in­volved four gayelles, from Cuche, Mc Bean, St Mary's and Sixth Com­pa­ny, each con­sist­ing of three stick-fight­ers against each oth­er to see who drew first blood. A fight­er from each gayelle al­so com­pet­ed for top ho­n­ours in the King of the Rock fi­nals.

Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Min­is­ter Win­ston "Gyp­sy" Pe­ters who opened the gayelle said he has had dis­cus­sions with Sports Min­is­ter Anil Roberts about mak­ing stick fight­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al sport­ing event. He al­so pledged to in­crease the first prize from $30,000 to $50,000 next year and would em­barked on a train­ing pro­gramme for young peo­ple in­ter­est­ed in the art form. Be­fore the start of the show, which was two hours lat­er than its 7 pm sched­uled start, the fight­ers gath­ered in the gayelle to per­form a tra­di­tion­al rit­u­al with pun­cheon rum and fire. Then, with bois (wood) in hand they "karayed" (danced) be­fore the flames to the in­fec­tious rhythm of the drums to in­voke the "spir­its." Dur­ing a bat­tle be­tween Odel and third placed Evon Ralph, po­lice had to be called in to quell a dis­tur­bance in­volv­ing sup­port­ers of the two fight­ers

Odel's sup­port­ers be­came vo­cif­er­ous as they ac­cused Ralph of fight­ing nasty. They ac­cused Ralph of de­lib­er­ate­ly strik­ing Odel on his hands, which a is not ac­cept­able in stick-fight­ing. Ralph's fans, on the oth­er hand, called for the judges to stop the fight and de­clare him the win­ner be­cause he drew Odel's blood. The fight­er who draws first blood wins, one per­son ex­plained. How­ev­er, in the end, it was the Valiant Broth­ers who dom­i­nat­ed the com­pe­ti­tion. Odel, an em­ploy­ee of Petrotrin, col­lect­ed a first prize of $15,000, while he and his broth­ers will share the $30,000 purse won in the gayelle cat­e­go­ry. He said he was over­joyed at hav­ing won the com­pe­ti­tion, in his sec­ond at­tempt. He placed third last year. He ded­i­cat­ed the vic­to­ry to his late fa­ther, King Mid­dle (Ver­non Odel Jr), who dom­i­nat­ed the com­pe­ti­tion when he was alive.