The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

AT least 17 schools from New Providence and the Family Islands have signed up to participate in the Bahamas Association of Athletic Association’s “Test Run” this weekend at the new Thomas A Robinson National Stadium for the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) inaugural World Relays.

Frank ‘Pancho’ Rahming, BAAA technical director, said they are looking forward to using the meet, not only to select the teams to compete in the finals of the High School segment that will proceed the biggest track and field meet to be staged in the Bahamas, but they will be ironing out all of the knits before the competition is staged May 24-25.

“We are hoping that we will have some good competition,” Rahming said. “It’s really a dry run for the relays, so we are trying to see if we can get all of the knits out so when the World Relays come around, we won’t have too much stress trying to correct things.

“The meet is coming together. We are in the process of trying to do some things. But hopefully we will get it all together this weekend.”

The two-day meet this weekend is slated to kick off at 6:30pm and continue 3:30pm Saturday. Teams will compete in the heats and finals for boys and girls in the 4 x 100, 4 x 200, 4 x 400 metres and sprint medley relays.

Grand Bahama, Abaco, Andros, Exuma, Eleuthera, San Salvador and Long Island are all expected to bring in teams that will compete against teams from New Providence. The top eight teams in each event contested will get a chance to compete in the prelude to the World Relays.

Mike Sands, president of the BAAA, said it’s going to be critical for the meet to be a success this weekend.

“I’m looking for some good performances from our junior athletes and we also expect to have our officials officiating,” he said. “It’s two weeks before the major event, so we are going to put the systems in place that will give us an opportunity to do a check and balance on our readiness for the actual event.

“But we are looking for our junior athletes to qualify themselves to perform on the world stage. We will be having the world coming to our shores to compete and so this will give them an opportunity to show what they are capable of doing. It’s like the Boys Champs in Jamaica.”

As the meet will serve as the high school relays trials, Sands said the BAAA and the Local Organising Committee will be out to prove that they are indeed ready to stage the World Relays.

“We expect that there will be hiccups along the way and that’s why we’re using this event, so I’m not anticipating persons coming back and criticising,” he said. “We are our worst critics. We know what our expectations are for the world event and so we will do a test to measure where we are in preparation for the event.”

Sands said they are expecting a number of dignitaries in town, including Robert ‘Bob’ Hersh, the senior vice president of the IAAF, Paul Hardy, the technical director for the IAAF and Stefan Thies, the director of media, to oversee all of the proceedings as it relates to the Bahamas’ preparation for the World Relays.

“We as a people have a tendency to want to jump to criticism. We are doing what we have to do to ensure our readiness,” he said. “We don’t expect for persons to be looking to criticise what we do or what we are about to do because we know the task ahead of us and the task ahead of us is an awesome task.

“The IAAF has never done an World Relays before, so certainly for the Bahamas and a country of our size, having the inaugural event speaks a lot about the confidence that the IAAF has in us. So yes, there is expected to be some level of hiccups, but together, the LOC, the IAAF, the BAAA, the officials and the executives will be doing a check and balance of every area to ensure that whatever needs to be done is done.”