NEXT YEAR, athletes at the CARIFTA Games will be competing in slightly different age groups as the meet finally falls in line with international standards.
Instead of the traditional Under-17 and Under-20 divisions which have obtained for the past 42 years, athletes will be competing in the Under-18 and Under-20 divisions.
The motion, which was brought by Barbadian Esther Maynard, an International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) technical official, was agreed on last Sunday during the annual congress.
The region’s track and field administrators had been discussing the issue for the last two years or so and were finally able to come to an agreement.
“This is in line, tying us in with World Youth as well as the Central America and Caribbean (CAC) Youth and Junior Championships,” Maynard told MIDWEEK?SPORT in an interview after the congress.
“CARIFTA was the pre-runner to both of those events and they have changed or been set up in that way so we were really at odds with them.
“The real reason is that in the year of World Youth and CAC Youth Championships there was a real disconnect because they [athletes] would compete at Under-17 and then have to change to Under-18.
“Underlying all of this is that you had 16-year olds, athletes who were going to be 17 in the year of competition, competing against athletes who were going to be 19.”
This means current Under-17 Boys’ 100 metres champion Mario Burke, who was preparing to move to the Under-20 division, has another year before going up among the big boys.
Tristan Evelyn, the bronze medallist in the Under-17 Girls’ 300m hurdles, would have two more years and a 14-year-old like Rivaldo Leacock, who dismissed the field in the 400m hurdles, would have three.
Maynard said the extra year was a grace period to allow athletes more time to adjust to the different weight and heights. For example, the javelin moves from 600 to 800 grams and the height of the intermediate hurdles from 84 centimetres to 91cm.
“These are the factors that really persuaded people this was the best transitional period going through, giving the athlete one more year of maturity before they stepped up to the higher age group and heavier weights and higher heights.”
To date, Burke with 10.55 seconds in the 100 metres and Evelyn with 11.8 seconds have both qualified for this year’s World Youth Championships which will be held in Donetsk, Ukraine, from July 10 to 14.
Next year’s CARIFTA games will be held in Martinique, who last hosted in 1999.
Both St Lucia and the Turks & Caicos Islands have bid for 2016, virtually ruling out any chance Barbados had of hosting the games during the 50th anniversary of Independence.
“In 2017, St Lucia has the Commonwealth Youth Games and obviously they need to have a serious test event within a year of that competition, so that is why they are particularly interested in hosting in 2016,” Maynard explained.
The Commonwealth Youth Games are also an Under-18/Under-20 event. At the last staging in 2011, Kion Joseph won a bronze medal in the 400m hurdles.
