The Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo will be closed from Ju­ly for the re­lay­ing of a new ath­let­ic mon­do track and re­cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of its ath­let­ics track, as well as the venue’s warmup track. The sta­di­um’s play­ing field is al­so set for re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.

The Jean Pierre Com­plex will al­so re­main closed dur­ing this pe­ri­od as the Com­plex gets set to un­der­go ren­o­va­tions at an es­ti­mat­ed cost of $36,105,966.64 to bring the fa­cil­i­ty up to stan­dard and to sat­is­fy safe­ty re­quire­ments.

The in­stal­la­tion of the run­ning sur­face was orig­i­nal­ly set to get un­der­way in ear­ly March but ac­cord­ing to the chair­man of the Sport Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go Dou­glas Ca­ma­cho, the four-month de­lay is to al­low lo­cal ath­letes to be ready for the up­com­ing Olympic Games set for Paris, France from Ju­ly 2 to Au­gust 11.

“The in­ten­tion is to start re­fur­bish­ment work back in March, but to en­sure our ath­letes have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to pre­pare, train, and qual­i­fy for the tri­als for the Olympics and the World (Un­der 20) Cham­pi­onships (in Li­ma Pe­ru from Au­gust 27-31) we got the In­ter­na­tion­al body (for track and field, World Ath­let­ics) to agree to ex­tend the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion un­til the end of June which they have fa­cil­i­tat­ed.”

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia Sports yes­ter­day Ca­ma­cho said that the foot­ball field at the Mu­cu­rapo venue will al­so be up­grad­ed. He ex­plains that all in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball match­es will now be played at the Ato Boldon and Dwight Yorke sta­di­um in the in­ter­im. “What will hap­pen in that pe­ri­od (of clo­sure) is that we have re­fur­bished the Ato Boldon field so you will have two world-class foot­ball fields as we have al­so re­cent­ly re­fur­bished the Dwight Yorke where foot­ball can con­tin­ue in prepa­ra­tion for World Cup qual­i­fiers or re­gion­al match­es etc.”

Ca­ma­cho said that dur­ing the first day of the Cari­com Crick­et Con­fer­ence at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel in Port-of-Spain on April 25, he gave the com­mit­ment that the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um will re-open by the end of 2024. “Our tar­get is be­fore the end of De­cem­ber that both the new track as well as the foot­ball field are com­plete­ly cer­ti­fied for in­ter­na­tion­al use so that we would be well ahead of time for the Carif­ta Games 2025 Games which T&T will host.”

The Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um was closed in the first half of 2023 for a $98 mil­lion up­grade in prepa­ra­tion for the Com­mon­wealth Youth Games which were staged in Au­gust.

In Jan­u­ary 2023, the lo­cal gov­ern­ing body for track and field, the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ic Ad­min­is­tra­tion, (NAAATT), an­nounced that the Hase­ly Craw­ford sta­di­um track lost its World Ath­let­ic cer­ti­fi­ca­tion as of De­cem­ber 31, 2023, and that a new track is to be re­laid from March af­ter the Carif­ta Tri­als.

Ac­cord­ing to a state­ment from the NAAA, the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um track al­so was de­cer­ti­fied and it too needs re­lay­ing. In late Jan­u­ary the Sport Com­pa­ny (SporTT) an­nounced that the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um track will re­ceive an ex­ten­sion of its cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and all lo­cal track and field meets, in­clud­ing the Na­tion­al Ju­ve­nile, Ju­nior and Open Cham­pi­onships will be held at the Ba­co­let fa­cil­i­ty while the re­lay­ing of the Hase­ly Craw­ford Craw­ford sur­face be­gins in March.