Canoe race registration begins
Although the race is a month away, organizers of the third annual La Ruta Maya Belize river Challenge are urging those who want to participate to sign up early. The canoe race which gets underway on March third in San Ignacio will end in Belize City on March Sixth. According to Richard Harrison of Big H Enterprises, this year’s event will be bigger and better for both the competitors and spectators.
Richard Harrison, Organizer, Canoe Race
“So we are trying to get better and in doing that, what we have done is try to iron out some of the glitches that we had in the past two years, we have experience and we know where we went wrong and we are trying to get some thing right. For example, in the opening ceremony, we don’t think we have done enough to let people know enough about the gruesomeness of this challenge, so that the people who are stars in our game are not properly projected, in terms of sports people, so we are going to be having a very elaborate ceremony in San Ignacio, which we are negotiating right now with the Rotaract club of San Ignacio to organize the opening ceremony. We expect that because the March third, which is the beginning of the race at six thirty in the morning at San Ignacio Hawksworth Bridge we will have, we estimate that estimate in the neighborhood of up to ten thousand people because it happens that March third is also Children’s Day and a lot of the schools in the San Ignacio area will be coming to the opening ceremony to watch what is going on and so, the opening ceremony definite will be much larger that it has ever been. Besides that, at the end of the race we are having a huge fair at the Belize Civic Center, we intend to have greasy pig, greasy pole, table games, competition for chopping wood, coconut husking competitions, and different things like that. As well, as we intend to have a wide array of Belizean foods being served there as well as drinks and music, so there will be a huge fair going on at he Civic Center, to end the race and to create a stage, so that the winners of the beautiful race, and very challenging race will be properly projected in terms of their abilities, because not anybody can go out there and paddle a hundred and seventy-five miles.”
Jacqueline Woods, Reporting
Speaking about the winners Richard, you were mentioning to me that you all plan to increase the prize money as well.
Richard Harrison
“Well absolutely, we know we promise in the first race that we had that we were going to grow the race by a hundred percent each year and in 1998 we had thirty-one canoes and a seven thousand dollars in prizes. Last year we had fifty-four canoes with fifteen thousand dollars in prizes and this year we are projecting to have a hundred and eight paddling teams with thirty thousand dollars in prizes so we are trying to live up to our commitment for the good of the races in that criteria and by the looks of all things so far, we are going to be very successful, actually, we are going to be limited in cutting off the registration to a hundred and eight teams, because of the logistics and the management, the organization is not big enough to handle more than that, and already, we haven’t have the forms out yet but we have teams coming in and paying their fees, they want to confirm that they are in the race and I want it to be known that we are going to cut off at a hundred and eight, that the first one hundred and eight teams to register, and we will then close off the registration.”
Big H Enterprise launched La Ruta Maya canoe race in 1998. Last year there were fifty-four entries. Harrison says they are hoping to double that number and increase the winnings. This year the race is also being sponsored by Esso. Competitors can register at any Scotia Bank, Esso Coral Grove or Big H in San Ignacio.
