Nicholas Ro­many won the 17th edi­tion of UWI Spec In­ter­na­tion­al Half-Marathon with a time of one hour, 13 min­utes, and 43 sec­onds when he crossed the fin­ish line at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus on Sun­day.

Ro­many, a res­i­dent of Mar­aval and a T&T Road Run­ners Club out­stand­ing road run­ner so far for 2023, was pushed all the way by the un­at­tached pair of Alex Eke­sa and Ta­fari Wal­dron dur­ing the event which al­so had a 5K seg­ment.

The race made a re­turn af­ter a three-year hia­tus due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. UWI’s Fac­ul­ty of Sport used the event and op­por­tu­ni­ty to pro­mote the rhythm of ath­leti­cism while en­dur­ing chal­lenges and push­ing to one’s lim­it.

The in­clu­sion of the 5K race was to tar­get a broad­er spec­trum of in­di­vid­u­als while en­cour­ag­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion. UWI aims to con­tribute to youth de­vel­op­ment through sports, with all pro­ceeds from both the half-marathon and the 5k event go­ing to­wards tal­ent­ed sports ju­niors for their ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion.

The half-marathon com­menced from UWI Spec at 5 am with an es­ti­mat­ed 1,800 run­ners (men and women) and took the field east through the Pri­or­i­ty Bus route to D’Abadie be­fore mak­ing a loop and back to the start­ing point. The top three over­all win­ners from both the male and fe­male cat­e­gories were award­ed in ad­di­tion to their medals, which they re­ceived at the end of the race.

Ra­many was fol­lowed home by Eke­sa, who clocked 1:13:51, and Wal­dron in 1:15:09. In the women’s cat­e­go­ry, Ce­cil­ia Mobu­chon from Gold­en Star club led with a time of 1:20:47. Sea­soned cam­paign­er Saman­tha Shuk­la was sec­ond in a time of 1:31:11 and Chantel Le Maitre se­cured third place in 1:41:59.

In the 5K, George Smith from De­fence Force placed first in 17 min­utes and 21 sec­onds, fol­lowed by Kur­win Phillip in 19:34 and Kris De­o­nanan in 19:50. Mean­while, Chen­nai Moore topped the women’s cat­e­go­ry in 22 min­utes and 12 sec­onds. Wendy D’Ar­basie from team Un­at­tached was sec­ond in a time of 23.49 and As­ma Charles in 24.14.

This year, UWI was in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ics Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go, as well as the Trinidad and To­ba­go Olympic Com­mit­tee.

RE­SULTS

HALF-MARATHON TOP FIVE MALE

Nicholas Ro­many, Bib #855, Club TTR­RC, 01:13:43

Alex Eke­sa Bib #3, Club Un­at­tached, 01:13:51

Ta­fari Wal­dron, Bib #853, Club Un­at­tached, 01:15:09

Collin Pereira, Bib #783, Club De­fence Force, 01:16:17

Christo­pher Mitchell, Bib #924, Club De­fence Force, 01:17:27

HALF MARATHON TOP FIVE WOMEN

Ce­cil­ia Mobu­chon, Bib #1047, Club Gold­en Star, 01:20:47

Saman­tha Shuk­la, Bib #5, Club Un­at­tached, 01:31:11

Chantel LeMaitre, BIb #643, Club Un­at­tached, 01:41;59

Chris­tine Reg­is, Bib #14, Club Ath­let­ics Cen­tral, 01:42:37

Lin­da Mc­Dowall, Bib #624, Club Un­at­tached, 01:44:49

5K TOP FIVE MEN

George Smith, Bib #5502, Club De­fence Force, 17:21

Kur­wim Ohillio, Bib #5478, Club Un­at­tached, 19:34

Kris De­o­nanan, Bib #5003, Club One More Mile, 19:50

Oneal Pa­ponette, Bib #5716, Club Chee­tahs Ath­let­ic Club, 20:33

Joshaun Col­lier, Bib #5313, Club +One A Week, 20:36

5K TOP FIVE WOMEN

Chen­nai Moore, Bib #5714, Club Chee­tahs Ath­let­ic Club 22:12

Wendy D’Ar­basie, Bib # 5765, Club Un­at­tached, 23.49

As­ma Charles, Bib # 5295, Club +One A Week, 24:14

Paula Pierre, Bib #5297, Club Un­at­tached, 25:06

Rox­anne McKen­na, Bib #5663, Club TTR­RC, 25:53