With the city bathed in moon­light and mu­sic in the air, Nicholas Ro­many blazed through the course in a re­mark­able one hour and 09.05 sec­onds to win Trinidad and To­ba­go’s first-ever Mid­night Half Marathon at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah in Port-of-Spain on Sat­ur­day.

As steel­pan and So­ca mu­sic echoed at the fin­ish line, Ro­many claimed first place in the men’s cat­e­go­ry. Ta­fari Wal­dron fol­lowed close be­hind with a time of 1:11.00, while Keron Ali se­cured third place at 1:13.27.

On the women’s side, Saman­tha Shuk­la led the field with a com­mand­ing fin­ish at 1:30:15, fol­lowed by Alex­ia John in 1:35:20 and Tere­sa Otero with a strong 1:37:00 fin­ish.

The in­au­gur­al Mid­night Half Marathon de­liv­ered an un­for­get­table ex­pe­ri­ence to run­ners, spec­ta­tors and sup­port­ers alike. Host­ed by Bafas­ports, the sold-out event brought to­geth­er hun­dreds of ath­letes and fit­ness en­thu­si­asts for a thrilling 13.1-mile race through the streets of the cap­i­tal - start­ing just af­ter mid­night at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah.

“This was a mo­ment for the his­to­ry books,” said Nigel Bel­lamy, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer at Bafas­ports. “We want­ed to give T&T some­thing dif­fer­ent, some­thing bold - and our com­mu­ni­ty showed up in a big way. From the elite run­ners to the first-timers, every­one brought pas­sion, pride and plen­ty of pos­i­tive vibes.”

The race route, closed off en­tire­ly to ve­hic­u­lar traf­fic, pro­vid­ed a safe and scenic loop through Port-of-Spain, along the bus route, to Pe­tit Bourg and back. Some 60 mem­bers of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices, along with Bafas­ports per­son­nel, en­sured a smooth and se­cure ex­pe­ri­ence for all par­tic­i­pants.

A por­tion of the pro­ceeds from the event will be do­nat­ed to a lo­cal chil­dren’s home, ac­cord­ing to Bafas­ports, con­tin­u­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s com­mit­ment to sup­port­ing com­mu­ni­ty-dri­ven caus­es through fit­ness and well­ness.

With live mu­sic, en­er­gis­ing race mar­shals and a cel­e­bra­tion at the fin­ish line, the event de­liv­ered a unique­ly Trin­bag­on­ian flavour to the in­ter­na­tion­al half-marathon for­mat. For many, it wasn’t just a race - it was a mid­night mem­o­ry they’ll nev­er for­get.

Bafas­ports, in a re­lease, ex­tend­ed thanks to all part­ners, par­tic­i­pants, vol­un­teers, se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel and sup­port­ers who made this event pos­si­ble. It added that plans are al­ready un­der­way for the stag­ing of the Mid­night Marathon in May.

Top 5

Men:

1 Nicholas Ro­many 1:09.05

2 Ta­fari Wal­dron 1:11.00

3 Keron Ali 1:13.27

4 Christo­pher Mitchell 1:13.48

5 Ti­tus Baynes 1:20.25

Women

1 Saman­tha Shuk­la 1:30.15

2 Alex­ia John 1:35.20

3 Tere­sa Otero 1:37.00

4 April Fran­cis 1:41.22

5 Ju­dith Petrie 1:47.22