T&T’s leading athletes Jereem Richards, Keshorn Walcott and Michelle-Lee Ahye are set to star at the National Gas Company National Association of Athletic Administrations of T&T (NGC-NAAATT) National Open Championships on Saturday and Sunday.

The action is set to unfold at the newly refurbished Hasely Crawford Stadium in Mucurapo, Port-of-Spain, starting today from 2 pm and continuing tomorrow at 3 pm.

Spectators are in for a treat as Richards, who has been thriving on the international circuit this season, will face the starter in the men’s 200 metres tomorrow afternoon. The two-time Commonwealth Games 200m champion and the 2022 World Indoors 400m winner will line up in heat one of three in the preliminaries.

Also competing in the dash are three members from the silver-medal winning 4x100m relay team at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, England, including Jerod Elcock, Eric Harrison and Kyle Greaux. Elcock and Harrison will race in heat two and Greaux in the final heat.

This evening though, Walcott will be going after his seventh consecutive national title in the men’s javelin event. The two-time Olympic medallist, who enters with a gold from the recent Central American and Caribbean Games, is competing unattached and will be challenged by five others including Ethan Adonis of Tigers Athletics, Point Fortin New Jets duo Anthony Diaz and Dorian Charles, Cameron Seaton (Unattached) and Le Bron James (Tobago Falcons).

Ahye, T&T’s celebrated women’s sprinter, will chase the sprint double. She will line up in both the women’s 100m and 200m, so too, two-time youth “Sportswoman of the Year” Shaniqua Bascombe.

According to a release from the NAAATT: “This weekend’s event is significant in many ways. It will determine our national champions; it provides a final opportunity for the athletes who have not yet attained the qualification standards for the upcoming World Athletics Championships to do so; it will assist the association in team selection; and it allows fans to see the best of our athletes. More importantly, this year our Open Championships serve as ‘the hard test’, a measure of how well-prepared we are to host the athletics segment of the Commonwealth Youth Games. The event will be like a final dress rehearsal when it is expected that all systems will be functional and running smoothly.”

Several of the junior athletes, who competed successfully at this year’s Carifta Games and at the recent North American, Central American and Caribbean (NACAC) Under-18 and U-23 Championships held last weekend in Costa Rica, will be joining the senior athletes.

There are also international races carded this weekend. Murielle Ahoure Demps of Ivory Coast will feature in the women’s 100m international dash versus Jasmin Abrams (Unattached), Halle Hazzard of Grenada and Liberia’s Symone Darius today.

The entrance fee is $100 daily.

Schedule

Today

Morning session

Men hammer throw

Afternoon session

Women 400m prelims

Men 400m prelims

Women 100m prelims

Men 100m Int’l prelims

Women discus

Men high jump

Men shot put

Women long jump

Men 100m prelims

Women 1,500m

Men 1,500m

Men 110m hurdles

Evening session