Belize and the Olympics: Can we improve?
Good evening I’m James Adderly and welcome to this edition of Sports Monday. Our focus remains on track and field since the conclusion of the Sydney Olympics, where two Belizeans participated. With us is Linsford Castillo a former athlete and former General Secretary of the Belize Amateur Athletic Association. We inquired from Mr. Castillo his take on the athletes from Belize who participated at the Sydney Olympics.
Linsford Castillo
“I am a heavy supporter of track and field in Belize, so with that in mind I was naturally proud and grateful to see our Belizeans stepping up to the highest level of sports in the world. Just for them to compete, the might not have seen their names up front, but nevertheless, the level of competition at the Olympics as everyone knows, is the highest, the best and for them to just be there, I am proud and I am really grateful to see what happened with out two athletes out there.””
For sometime now we’ve been wondering why Belizean track and field is so successful at the infant level only. Here is Linsford view.
Linsford Castillo
“The unfortunate thing about this situation is that we do not have proper follow up in terms of seeing our athletes starting out from the infant stage, coming up through the junior and eventually on to the open field. There is an obvious breakdown somewhere between the junior level and the open. If you notice, we have athletes that excel in the infants regionally. But those same athletes five, ten years later, competing at the Central American level are not so bright. So that is telling me that we have a breakdown somewhere whether it is equipment wise, or coaching wise or something of the sort. But there is definitely a breakdown that we need to tap into, remedy and we could see our athletes go right through and become world class.”
James Adderly
“Do you believe that we have enough events in Belize to prepare the athletes for competition at this level?”
Linsford Castillo
“Definitely not! In my opinion, that is something that we need to work on and that is something that the Belize Amateur Athletic Association needs to focus on, in terms of having a proper calendar of events and having those events when it is scheduled. Many times we would plan a calendar and half of the events do not materialize for some reason or the other. So my answer to that is no, we need to have more events so that our athletes remain in that competitive mood.”
“What I have been working on, along with a very good team is to bring back life into the road racing aspect of track and field. We have since, over the last two months, formed a road racing committee, to spearhead, execute and to plan all road racing activities from 5K’s up to a full marathon and everything in between.”
Hopefully folks this undertaking will help our track and field athletes realize their dreams and maybe we can produce athletes that can compete at the level of Marion Jones, right here in Belize.
Changing gears folks, we want to remind you that in football news, the quadrangular being presented by the Belize Football League comes from Friday to Sunday at the Capital City Belmopan, as the BFL and BNFA celebrate FIFA Fairplay Day. The four teams invited are Kulture Yabra, Sagitun of Independence, Griga Tropical of Dangriga, and of course the host team Belmopan Bandits. Of course you do know the BFL regular season resumes action on November fourth.
