media_artricles :: 2015

Walcott, Borel lead T&T to Pan Am Games

A 32-member national track and field team will leave for the Pan American Games in Canada, tomorrow, led by Keshorn Walcott and Cleopatra Borel.

T&T's Pan American Games athletic team will leave for Toronto at 1.04 am. The first track and field event is scheduled for Tuesday.

Walcott and Borel have been in scintillating form of late. At the Diamond League in Lausanne, Switzerland on July 9, Walcott broke his own national record with a throw of 90.16 metres to win gold in the javelin event. At the Spitzen Leichtathletik meet in Luzern, Switzerland on Tuesday, Borel won gold in the women's shot put with a top throw of 18.65m.

The T&T team will now travel with 32 athletes, as opposed to the original 35 selected. The reason for this is that the Association of Panamerican Athletics (APA) recently produced revised qualifying standards at the last minute, in their effort to limit the number of athletic competitors at the Games to 680.

This decision by the APA is not exclusive to team T&T, as many other countries have been affected by this. The National Association of Athletics Administrations of T&T (NAAA) believes the decision is unfair as travel arrangements were already put in place, as the original standards were set since last year. The three T&T athletes who will not be traveling to Canada for the games are triple jumper Steve Waithe, discus thrower Emmanuel Stewart and heptathlete Marsha Mark-Baird.

Originally six athletes were rejected by APA, but the NAAA's appealed the decision through the T&T Olympic Committee and were able to get three of the six reinstated to the team.

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