No Rio for Pamenos!

When the roll call was made for the Vincentian contingent at the North American, Central America and Caribbean (NACAC) Open, from July 13-15 in El Salvador, absent was Pamenos Ballantyne.

This country and the Caribbean’s leading distance runner for the past decade was unable to travel to that Central American country after he was allegedly detained here on a traffic offence.{{more}}

Ballantyne was hoping to subsequently attend the Pan Am Games in Rio de Janeiro Brazil, which followed the NACAC outing. Slated to run in the marathon event on July 29, Ballantyne, however was in the end, not considered.

Chief of Mission of the St. Vincent and the Grenadines team to the Pan Am Games Wayne Williams informed SEARCHLIGHT via e-mail last Saturday, “He is not in the team. The Technical meeting took place yesterday and based on the rules of the Games all names had to be in at that point”.

It was thought at one juncture that Ballantyne would have made at least the Brazil leg, however it would have cost about EC$7000 to change his flights.

“He would have had to find another ticket costing some $7,000 (the ticket that the NOC paid for had become void because he missed the travel date)”, Williams, also of the National Olympic Committee wrote.

“If Mr. Ballantyne did not make an appearance, we the SVGNOC would have had to pay a substantial fine”, Williams added.

Based mostly in Trinidad and Tobago for the second quarter of the year, a redeemed Ballantyne was well prepared for the outing having notched up a string of victories in the twin island republic, Grenada and Barbados during that period.

It was the second time that Ballantyne has missed out on participating in a major athletics event. Last year he was not selected by Team Athletics SVG for the Commonwealth Games as it was considered by the selection committee that he ran too many marathons just prior to the Melbourne outing.

He joined two other Vincentian athletes who were named to travel to both games but had to opt out. Natasha Mayers and Casnel Bushay had to forego their participation because of injury.(RT)