‘NATIONAL pride will be at stake for a team of Bermudian athletes preparing to compete against some of the world’s elite performers at the Island Games in New York.’ No, this is not an error, your eyes are not playing you tricks.
Yes, the article is referring to the Big Apple, not Rhodes and the event was earlier this month.
So it seems in sporting terms, Bermuda is seeking the best of at least two worlds and along with the host island, Cayman and the Isle of Man, will be the big threat to Guernsey’s four-year dominance of Europe’s main Island Games over the coming week.
The Guerns topped the medals table in both Shetland and Guernsey in 2003, their total haul of golds at those two events being 95.
The next best is Jersey with 70, Isle of Man 63 and Bermuda 31.
But this time the Bermudians mean business. From the 90 who travelled to Rhodes, numbers have grown to 140 in Shetland and, wait for it, close to 300 in Rhodes.
No Guernsey team is more threatened by the Bermudians’ growing interest in the Games, than athletics, which has brought home 31 golds over the past four years.
Expect the ratio to plunge this coming week even though the island have despatched their strongest ever squad.
It will still take a very accomplished athlete to head the likes of Dale Garland and Lee Merrien, but the combined challenge of Bermuda, Cayman and Rhodes is sure to bite deep into the Sarnians’ past dominance.
Bermuda will be represented by two athletes in virtually every track and field event, Cayman have sent their biggest team yet, including former Commonwealth Games medallist Kareem Streete-Thompson and world-class sprinter Cydonie Mothersill, and then there is the host team.
To give an indication of Mothersill’s class, in a 2004 Olympic 200m heat in Athens I saw her defeat one Marion Jones.
Admittedly Jones was cruising through an easy qualifier and Mothersill flat out, but the Cayman Islander’s 23.73 in winning the 200m gold in Gotland in 1999 is a full two seconds quicker than the standard winning time. Two seconds in a sprint is a long way.
It is still unclear, how serious Bermuda and Cayman are taking this particular Games, but given that it is being staged under a blue sky and in guaranteed warmth, they may consider it of much benefit to send as many first-choicers as possible and make a real impact at the Games
The are both making the right noises.
Stephen Wright, athletics correspondent for Bermuda’s Royal Gazette, promises a strong challenge from his island’s track and field stars.
‘It is the first time Bermuda have sent an athletics squad to the Island Games,’ he said.
‘It is a reasonably strong squad although some of the athletes that would have been selected can’t go as they are competing in the World Youth Championships and Junior Pan-Am Games. But they believe they will be among the medals.’
Cayman, too, are very hopeful of success on the track.
Richard Parchment, chairman of the Cayman Island Games committee,’ said the event is ‘the ideal proving ground or stepping-stone that can lead athletes into larger competitive arenas such as the Pan-Am Games and the Olympics’.
‘Success or failure at the Island Games is the perfect test to determine whether or not one is ready for the bigger stage,’ he added.
‘The Island Games are very important for us because they allow many of our athletes to compete, far more than ever get the chance to compete at the Pan-Am Games or Olympics.’
* THE second annual Island Games in New York was billed in some quarters as ‘the Caribbean v. USA’.
Athletes of all ages from Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, Antigua, Puerto Rico and throughout the USA came together at the Mitchel Athletic Complex in Uniondale.
Article posted on 30th June, 2007 - 12.00am
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