Lo­cal ath­letes will still get a chance to qual­i­fy for the up­com­ing Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan de­spite the de­ci­sion by the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ics Ad­min­is­tra­tion of T&T (NAAATT) to not host the Na­tion­al Se­nior Cham­pi­onships due to the on­go­ing coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic.

In­stead, ath­letes who still have a chance to book a spot at the Games, will com­pete at the NAAATT's Olympic tri­als over two week­ends ac­cord­ing to act­ing pres­i­dent of the as­so­ci­a­tion, George Comis­siong.

"NAAAs will not be hav­ing any cham­pi­onships this year, how­ev­er, we have re­ceived per­mis­sion from the Min­is­ter of Health to host two Olympic tri­als on June 20 and 27, re­spec­tive­ly. These are in­vi­ta­tion­al meets where we shall be invit­ing ath­letes who may still have a chance of mak­ing a qual­i­fy­ing stan­dards for the Olympics."

The two-day tri­als will be or­gan­ised by the NAAATT events com­mit­tee, which Comis­siong ad­vised is the group charged with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of all meets and that they are do­ing every­thing to en­sure that all are in place for both events.

Ear­li­er this year, Comis­siong and his team host­ed about six meets. The first two of which were ac­tu­al­ly called 'test' events and were de­signed to test their pre­pared­ness to host events while en­sur­ing ad­her­ence to the COVID-19 pro­to­cols.

"For the up­com­ing tri­als, we plan to be even more rigid in en­sur­ing com­pli­ance. We have de­vel­oped an op­er­a­tions man­u­al to guide the con­duct of the meets. Giv­en the con­tin­u­ing bor­der clo­sure, we do not ex­pect par­tic­i­pa­tion by any of our for­eign-based ath­letes.

"A de­ci­sion was tak­en months ago to vary the se­lec­tion process tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the re­al­i­ties of our cur­rent cir­cum­stances, re­vise se­lec­tion cri­te­ria were de­vel­oped by the board and ap­proved by the mem­ber­ship," said Comis­siong, who added that the NAAATT will fi­nalise the team and sub­mit to the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) ear­ly Ju­ly.

"The last date for the qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the Olympics is on June 29, this is two days af­ter our sec­ond Olympic tri­als. We plan to se­lect our team on Ju­ly 1. This takes in­to con­sid­er­a­tion that World Ath­let­ics, will be invit­ing some ath­letes to par­tic­i­pate, by way of ex­am­ple the cur­rent quo­ta for the hep­tathlon is 24 ath­letes, that is to say that the or­gan­is­ers want 24 ath­letes to com­pete at the Olympics in that event. Not all of these ath­letes may make the stan­dard.

"Let's say 14 ath­letes at­tain the stan­dard then an ad­di­tion­al 10 ath­letes will be in­vit­ed based on their per­for­mance rank­ings."

He used star mul­ti-sport ath­lete Tyra Git­tens as an ex­am­ple in ex­plain­ing the in­vi­ta­tion process by World Ath­let­ics say­ing: "Our Tyra Git­tens has been hav­ing a won­der­ful year and is cur­rent­ly 23rd on the rank­ings. We ex­pect that Tyra would at­tain the stan­dard but let's just say she didn't, then Ju­ly 1, we should know for sure if she is among those who will be in­vit­ed to com­pete.

"We have al­ready ad­vised TTOC that our team will be sub­mit­ted late on the night of Ju­ly 1 or al­ter­na­tive­ly very ear­ly on the morn­ing of Ju­ly 2. This will al­low suf­fi­cient time for rat­i­fi­ca­tion by the TTOC coun­cil be­fore the fi­nal sub­mis­sion of en­tries."

Yes­ter­day, in the Min­istry of Health's lat­est COVID-19 up­date, there were 327 new pos­i­tive cas­es and nine deaths re­port­ed in the last 24 hours. T&T has re­port­ed 8,965 ac­tive pos­i­tive cas­es and 686 deaths, over­all.