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Sunday, February 23, 2025

Carnival-like atmosphere opens CYG

by

WALTER ALIBEY
568 days ago
20230805
Members of the Trinidad and Tobago team parade during the Opening Ceremony of the 2023 Commonwealth Youth Games at the Hasley Crawford Stadium, Port-of-Spain, yesterday.

Members of the Trinidad and Tobago team parade during the Opening Ceremony of the 2023 Commonwealth Youth Games at the Hasley Crawford Stadium, Port-of-Spain, yesterday.

NICOLE DRAYTON

It was Car­ni­val in Au­gust as the Com­mon­wealth Youth Games be­gan with much fan­fare at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo on Fri­day.

The Games wel­comed ath­letes, fans, and sup­port­ers from 70 coun­tries that will com­pete in sev­en sports- name­ly ath­let­ics, cy­cling, triathlon, beach vol­ley­ball, rug­by, net­ball and swim­ming.

Cy­cling, swim­ming Ath­let­ics and Para-ath­let­ics will take place in Trinidad while Beach Vol­ley­ball, rug­by (sev­ens, triathlon and net­ball (Fast 5) will take place in the sis­ter isle of To­ba­go and will run un­til Au­gust 11.

At the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny at the Mu­cu­rapo venue, a noisy rhythm sec­tion, parad­ing mas­quer­aders and sway­ing moko jumbies had set the tone for what to ex­pect the in­side, where Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and oth­er gov­ern­ment min­is­ters, in­clud­ing Min­is­ter of Sports and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Sham­fa Cud­joe, and Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Nyan Gads­by Dol­ly, among many oth­ers dig­ni­taries had tak­en a cen­tre seat.

How­ev­er, it was the pa­rade of 70 na­tions that made the trek on the track in front of the cov­ered area that cre­at­ed the loud­est cheers. These cheers lat­er turned to a crescen­do when the an­nounce­ment of the T&T team came, as the large con­tin­gent of ath­letes re­spond­ed by danc­ing to the so­ca song of Nya George's 'Trinidad.'

In the stands, wav­ing flags and arms ac­knowl­edged their pres­ence, but it al­so came with em­brac­ing arms to many na­tions nev­er seen or heard of be­fore in the twin-is­land Re­pub­lic, in the area of sports.

Teams such as Rwan­da, Mozam­bique, Namib­ia, Tan­za­nia, Ugan­da, South Africa, Sin­ga­pore, Cyprus, Gibral­tar, Isle of Man, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Is­lands, Malaysia, Kenya, and Malawi among many oth­er coun­tries to will have ath­letes per­form­ing in front of lo­cal fans.

Pres­i­dent of the Com­mon­wealth Games Dame Louise Mar­tin de­scribed the cer­e­mo­ny as one of the best she has ever seen. She said the event will unite the Com­mon­wealth re­gion for this pe­ri­od and asked all to en­joy the com­pe­ti­tion as they give their best.

Fol­low­ing yes­ter­day's open­ing cer­e­mo­ny, ac­tion will be­gin at 9 am this morn­ing with the In­di­vid­ual Time Tri­al us­ing a route around the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my in Tarou­ba.

The young rid­ers will be re­quired to com­pete on a 10-kilo­me­tre route while the boys will be asked to con­test a 15k dis­tance.

Mean­while, at the UCI World Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships in Glas­gow, Scot­land, sprint­ers Nicholas Paul and Kwe­si Browne will con­test the fly­ing 200-me­tre sprint, for a chance to qual­i­fy for the match sprint event lat­er.

The lo­cal rid­ers will be us­ing this event to gain much-need­ed points ahead of the Olympic Games in Paris, France next year.


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