Gunness Persad wants the Manny Ramjohn Stadium track cleared for competition.

The Simplex Athletic Club head coach said the track was declared unsafe by the National Association of Athletics Administrations of Trinidad and Tobago (NAAATT). As a result, the local governing body for track and field refused to sanction any 2020 meets at the Marabella venue.

“Between March and May,” Persad told the Express, “there were three meets planned by the MAP (Maximising Athletic Potential) club and Jim Clarke’s Southern Classic that had to be cancelled. As it turned out, Covid-19 halted the season anyway.”

In two Express articles in 2018 – May and November – Persad had appealed for repair work to be done on the Manny Ramjohn track.

“Close to the finish line,” Persad had explained in the November 2018 article, “the material is raising off of the concrete base. In some spots, you’re actually seeing bare concrete. It has gotten worse between May and now. With rain falling and athletes running on it, it’s raising up more. While it may have cost $10,000-$12,000 to fix if they had acted in May, now it’s going to cost more.”

More than two years later, the track is still in a state of disrepair. Persad is calling on the Ministry of Sport and Community Development to intervene.

“We want a meeting with the Ministry, and for someone in authority to say if the track is safe or unsafe. And if it is unsafe, we want to know how and when it could be rectified. We need to have meets there next year. Schools from Mayaro to Cedros have their Games at the Manny Ramjohn Stadium.”

Clubs in south Trinidad, including Simplex, currently train at the Marabella stadium.

“The Sunday after Carnival, we hosted a development meet with 26 clubs, and they felt the track was safe. Without NAAA sanction, there was no electronic timing, so everything was hand-timed. But all the top clubs were there, including Memphis, Abilene, Cougars, Concorde and Simplex.”