FORMER Barbados race walking champion Noel Husbands is set to give an exhibition walk on New Year’s Day in an attempt to revive long-distance walking in the country.
Husbands, who has returned home after residing in Trinidad and Tobago for the past seven years, intends to hit the road from the Grantley Adams International Airport at 7 a.m. and journey all the way to Holetown, St James and back to the starting point.
This trip is estimated to be 42 miles but walking such long distances is not new to the 55-year-old Husbands, whose last walk was the 44-mile TV6 San Fernando to Port-of-Spain event earlier this year which he covered in nine hours, 20 minutes, earning TT $1 000 for a solo effort.
“Long-distance walking in Barbados has faded and I want to rekindle the interest for it with the hope that one day we can produce a walker to represent the country at the Olympic Games,” Husbands told NATION SPORT in an interview yesterday.
“There is a 50-K walk for men and a 20-K for women at the Olympics and getting there would be the ultimate thing. It would be achievement for the country but our walkers must do the qualifying times,” he said.
“The race walking style is a joy to behold. It is like poetry in motion to see someone travel at such speed as there is a very thin line between walking and running and one can easily be disqualified,” he noted.
But he laments that the emphasis these days is only on sprint walks instead of the longer walks distances.
“All there is now is 5-K and 10-K walks. There is no event over 20 miles and I want to push walking higher and back to the days when Bertie Lashley became a household name when we had around the island walking races,” Husbands said.
