James Adderley looks at mountain bike race
Good evening, I’m James Adderley and you’re right on time for this dish of Sports Monday. Let’s start with the Belize Amateur Basketball series as Christian Ambassadors and Mirab find themselves in a final shootout for the 1999 senior title at the City Centre Friday night.
It’s 2 points immediately off the tip-off courtesy of Armin Arana who gets the good bounce for the Ambassadors. It’s more Christian Ambassadors when Greg Williams comes up with the steal and goes all the way for 2 easy points. In fact in the early goings it looks like a blowout when Keith Genitty finds Trey Stuart all alone who converts. The Ambassadors go up by 10.
Of course Mirab does come back. The feed down low to Glenroy Lightfoot and it’s good for 2. Warren Garcia then takes on the entire Christian defense and gets the 2 to fall. The nice feed from Patrick Simmons finds Tedgar Enriquez and at the half Mirab has pulled a 2-point lead.
In second half play the lead balloons to 12 when Lightfoot goes baseline for 2. Down by all of 15 the Ambassadors get busy: Greg Williams with the steal, Genitty streaks down for the lay-up. The outlet pass finds Greg Williams who out-runs the Mirab defense for 2. On the very next play Williams finds Lightfoot and the Ambassadors are only down by 6.
It’s more big play from Williams who splits the defense for 2 and Ambassadors take a 1 point lead. Andrew Robateau then burst through the middle to find Douglas Hyde who gets 2. Lightfoot then gets a big bucket to fall in money-time and it’s Lightfoot who adds the finishing touch as Christian Ambassadors survive the curse of the bridesmaids and pick up its 1st season title with 73-65 final score. We say congratulations to the Ambassadors.
Now let’s turn our attention to yesterday’s monster mountain bike race from Belmopan to Belize City which had so much hype going in we couldn’t believe it. After 50 miles of competition it’s only 2 riders heading to the tape at Constitution Park. Forget the racer bikers; today they are only macaroni. It’s Melvin Torres against the dangerous Edward “the Don” Zelaya. While Torres turns up the pressure “the Don” tones it down giving the big “W” to the 40 year old veteran.
In the sprint for 3rd place, it’s Stephen Welch with that win forcing 43 year old Santino Castillo into 4th place. Abraham Douglas pulls up 5th, Ryan Leslie 6th, Keon Cherrington 7th, Curtis August 8th, Paul Trapp 9th and Wayne Arnold rounds out the top 10. Ryan Rivero finished and he paid too huge a price for that particular effort.
Meanwhile Melvin Torres was humble after his big “W”.
Melvin Torres, Winner
“James, I wanna say thanks to everybody who gave their support and to Santino who had that confidence in me to have me back on his team. I wanna say that most of the time “Don” was the stronger person on the road and he did a lot of work and we supported one another. Don carried me through some bad moments and I think I carried him through some other moments so I think that all in all we had to sprint and see who was the better person at the end.”
Don wanted to know if we were going to sprint due to the amount of work that we were doing out there. I told him that with the type of work that we were doing we had to sprint. I think we told one another when we were going to jump and I think I prevailed. I have a little experience over him.”
However, “Don” Zelaya was definitely upset.
Edward “the Don” Zelaya, Second Place
“It’s true but I worked more than he. He shouldn’t have done that to me at the end because he knows that I worked more than he. I didn’t expect to sprint because we had an agreement from out there. That’s why I didn’t sprint.”
Q: “So you didn’t expect that attack at the end? Do you think it was ungentlemanlike?”
Edward “the Don” Zelaya
“He never should have done that because he knew the whole way I worked for him more than he worked for me.”
Either “the Don” was a victim of a misunderstanding or he is a sore looser.
That’s it for now. Jah over all. I’m James Adderley.
