No podium finish for SVG at CAC Seniors

St. Vincent and the Grenadines did not gain any podium finishes at the Central America and Caribbean (CAC) Senior Track and Field Championships, which took place in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico from last Friday, July 15 to Sunday, July 17.{{more}}

Hopes were pinned mainly on Natasha Mayers, the reigning Commonwealth 100 meters Women’s champion.

Mayers did not start the 100m finals last Friday evening at the Estadio Jose Antonio Figueroa, even though she qualified for the medal race when she clocked 11.78 seconds in her heat.

The race was eventually won by Trinidad and Tobago’s Semoy Hackett, in 11.27 seconds. Jamaica took the silver and bronze, with Jura Levy second in 11.36 seconds, just ahead of Simone Facey’s 11.39 seconds.

Kineke Alexander’s time in the 400 m heats was 55.41 seconds, as she placed sixth in her heat, which was not good enough to put her past the first round.

Alexander medalled at the 2006 CAC Seniors held in Cartagena, Colombia, where she placed third in her pet event.

Yurnic Nanton ran 50.65 seconds in the Men’s 400 m and Keron Lawrence did 51.78 seconds, which saw them get no further than the preliminaries.

Another member of the Vincentian team, Amail Samuel, clocked a time of 11.39 seconds in the 100 m Men’s heat, with Courtney Bascombe doing 11.03 seconds. Neither made it through to the next phase of competition.

Meanwhile, Lawrence Arthur and Courtney Williams, who competed in the Men’s 200m, clocked 23.09 and 23.25 seconds, respectively, in their heat. Both finished last among their batch of competitors.

The quartet of Samuel, Bascombe, Williams and Nanton was disqualified in the Men’s 4 x 100m Relay, for an out of the box violation, where the outgoing runner touches the baton before the first line of the takeover zone.

And, Pamenos Ballantyne, running in the Half Marathon, placed seventh in 1 hour 17 minutes 8 seconds.

The Vincentian contingent was managed by Alrick Wright and Michael Ollivierre.

The affiliates, which make up the NACAC area are: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Canada, Cayman Islands, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Montserrat, Netherlands Antilles, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, El Salvador, St. Kitts & Nevis, Saint Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad & Tobago, Turks & Caicos, U.S.A. and the U.S. Virgin Islands.(RT)