Inaugural Arrowhead Athletics League begins this Saturday
The Arrowhead League deemed the “Twenty20 of Track and Field” is set for this weekend where local athletes will be granted financial incentives for outstanding performance on the track.
All systems are set for the Arrowhead League, Guyana’s first-ever athletics league, to begin this weekend at the Leonora Track and Field Facility.
For the first time, local competitors in athletics events will be rewarded financially for outstanding performances.
The first of five meets will take place on Saturday, April 30 and Sunday, May 1.
The initial event will be an invitational league based on the rankings developed by the Athletics Association of Guyana (AAG).
Aubrey Hutson, President of the Athletics Association of Guyana (AAG), said: “It's an opportunity to give our athletes a lot more competition, especially our senior athletes to keep them competitive. Results are being fed to world athletics and this can earn them points to get to the Olympics and World Championships. So the objective is to bridge that gap, remove those inefficiencies in the system that we had in the past. Basically, senior competition was reduced to just one senior competition a year which was the Senior Championship.”
Hutson added that athletes often leave the sport after graduating high school because there was no reward to encourage them to remain in the sport, and this league is an answer to that.
He likened the league to a smaller, more localised version of the popular Diamond League.
Hutson coined the two-day event as the “Twenty20 of Track and Field” with events each day taking place over approximately three hours.
“We’re going to stop at the 1500m. At first, we were going to the 5000m and removing the 1500 but then we got some requests from the coaches to include other field events, so in trying to accommodate them we’ll remove the longer 5000m and do the 1500m.”
The fifth meet of the league, which will be wrapped up by September, will have the best of the athletes from meets throughout the earlier part of the year. These athletes will compete for the biggest prizes.
In the preliminary rounds, athletes can earn $10,000 for first, $6,000 for a second, $4,000 for third, and come the finals those numbers could be doubled.
