This Week in NACAC: CADICA Seniors 2022

EDITORIAL

While much attention continues to be focused on NACAC’s preparation for the first World Athletics Outdoor Championships scheduled for Eugene, Oregon, later this month, NACAC President, Mike Sands, was a guest of honour at the Inaugural Caribbean Games in Guadeloupe. The Games, owned by the Caribbean Association of National Olympic Committees (CANOC), ran through the period, 29 June – 3 July and athletics was one of the three core sports, along with netball and swimming.

President Sands not only attended the athletics competition but was duly publicly recognized for his contribution to the sport by the Athletics Federation of Guadeloupe.

Through {President Sands, NACAC was presented with a gold, silver and bronze medal, that were awarded to the winners at the competition, for the organisation’s archives.

On behalf of NACAC, President Sands commended CANOC for its initiative and its focus on the U23 athletes, the grouping in which many athletes drop out of the sport. He noted, “while our senior athletes are staying competitive longer, the younger athletes easily consider that it takes too long for them to become the future elite champions of our sport. We have to be innovative in our development of programmes and competitions to sustain their interest in our sport.

“We are grateful to CANOC and the Guadeloupe Organising Committee for their foresight and commitment to creating competitions like the Caribbean Games that facilitate the sustainability of our sport and NACAC’s leadership within it,” Sands concluded.

St Lucia’s Julien Alfred, was easily the most outstanding athlete at the track and field competition, with an outstanding 11.07 performance in winning the 100m, leaving the rest of the finalists well behind.

Sands could not help expressing his disappointment at the fact that “the athletics competition at the Games, an inaugural Caribbean attempt at organizing a multi-sport event for athletes of the region to compete before their own people, had only one representative track and field athlete from one of the powerful athletics nations in the region, Jamaica.

According to President Sands, “Jamaica is not lacking in athletes at the U23 level who could easily have added significant value to the track and field competition and so enhance the quality of the Games, more generally. Their absence with some of the best athletes of the Caribbean at a Caribbean event was highlighted by all in attendance, not the least of whom were the leaders of CANOC, CROSGUA (the Guadeloupe Olympic and Sports Organisaton) and the several

Caribbean Olympic Committees and Athletics Federations.”

CADICA Seniors 2022

The Nicaraguan Athletics Federation continues to lead by example in respect of the hosting of athletics championships in the NACAC Area.

On the weekend, 2 – 3 July, the Nicaraguan Federation proudly and successfully hosted the XXXII Senior Central American Athletics Championships.

In many respects, this edition of the event was special because the Nicaraguan leadership of Xiomara Larios stood firm in the face of the potential threat of bad weather associated with ‘Bonnie’.

Athletes from Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Panama joined with their counterparts from the host nation, Nicaragua, for what emerged as a fine weekend of athletics competition.