SVG’s focus is on 800 metres in World Athletics Championships

VINCENTIANTRACK AND field fans and indeed, sport-loving patriots will be following the World Athletics Championships which begin tomorrow, Saturday, September 13, 2025 in Tokyo, Japan and will run for the next 10 days.

The focus of the Vincentian community will be especially intensive, for St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) was the only Windward Island nation not to be rewarded with a medal at the Paris Olympics in 2024.Vincentian athletes and supporters are especially hopeful that with improved facilities at the new national stadium, and international training and performing opportunities, SVG would be able to begin gaining medals at such high-profile championships. In Paris, the country’s best achievement was the fifth place of Shafiqua Maloney in the women’s 800 metres. In Tokyo, SVG will have a competitor in the 800m race in both the men’s and women’s categories. Shafiqua will be seeking to get a place among the first three, while Handal Roban will be carrying the hopes of SVG in the men’s contest.

Local athletics fans are particularly anxious to register SVG’s medal presence at such a high-powered event. They note that St Lucia, in the person of the world’s leading female sprinter, Julien Alfred; Dominica, through Thea La Fond; and Grenada’s duo of Anderson Peters and Lindon Victor all returned from Paris with medals.

St Vincent and the Grenadines will be hoping for similar medal successes in the Japan World Championships.