By: Staff Writer
March 12, 2021
The 49th CARIFTA Track and Field games will be held in Hamilton Bermuda during August 13 to 15 as organisers have “cautious optimism” that this year’s games will go well.
Michael Sands, president of the North American, Central American and Caribbean Athletic Association (NACAC), speaking at a Zoom conference yesterday said: “We have this very, very important development of our sport, and also failure is not an option.”
“So whatever it takes to make this happen, we are going to make this happen, and we are. You’ll often hear me use the term cautious optimism. That means that right now we are in March and we are hoping that in August the world would be in a much, much better place than we are today that will allow particularly for the vaccines being rolled out.”
Michael Serralta, Competitions/Technical Director for the NACAC, said in confirmation of the August 13 to August 15 date for CARIFA track and field competition, “I gave something like seven dates that could be used and started scratching.
Now, depending on certain scenarios that I am not aware of that other people know that’s happening within the Caribbean, or within any part of NACAC. So the final date that came out was the date of August 13 to 15. We know that this brings a complications with the World Championships on the 20, which we also got permission from World Athletics.”
Last year’s games were cancelled due to the impact of the onset of the COVID-19 virus where most events were cancelled worldwide. The event was originally slated to be held July 2-4, but that has now changed to coincide with COVID-19 vaccine roll out throughout the region and North America.
This year’s CARIFTA will have no fans in attendance and will be an athlete only, closed event for the competitors as a precaution.
Mr Serralta stressed that they will try to maintain a clean and supervised atmosphere for all athletes, understanding that the CARIFTA games typically play host to young athletes who may not have the discipline to stay within their distances once at the competition venue.
He also said that they have a strategy that they will use if one athlete contracts the virus and that if one athlete contracts the virus they will not be allowed to compete and anyone who was in close proximity to them will also not be allowed to compete.
Donna Raynor, president of the Bermuda National Athletics Association, also said: “As we said, there may not be people in the stands. I mean these are things that we have to be prepared for, but I think we’re not the only sport.
“I love tennis. I’ve been watching tennis, they had tennis tournament with no crowds. They tried to have crowds and then they had a positive, then they went back to no crowds.” She said that by her watching the European Indian indoor championships where there was a few athletes that tested positive for the virus, they had to quickly decide what to do. “So I think all of us had these challenges, but we can’t lay down and say, we’re not going to do it, we’re going to at least give 100 percent and try as hard as we can.”