76 Athletes Expected For International Track Meet
There are 76 athletes converging on our shores for the Bermuda Invitational Permit Meet which will take place this Friday, the Bermuda National Athletics Association [BNAA] announced.
BNAA President Donna Raynor said, “As you can imagine, we have had several chopping and changing of athletes with an event of this magnitude. We are very excited with the list we have ended up with, and there are 76 athletes who will be converging on our shores.
“Not only do we have athletes but we also have a few managers, an announcer and a media person from Jamaica. This is working out better than we could have ever imagined. We are still receiving requests from athletes wanting to enter this event. I think the buzz came about at the Chris Brown Invitational in Bahamas this past weekend, as we have not had any difficulty filling the lanes to the capacity that we need.
“We have 9 athletes in the men’s Long Jump and 11 in the men’s 800m. We have some top long jumpers who Tyrone has been competing against over several years and they all of Personal Bests over 8.0m, Damar Forbes, Michael Hartfield. The 800m is a tough field with 11 vying for the top position and will push Aaron.
“You will note that we also have a few Olympic Champions, World Champions, World Junior champions, Pan Am games medalist, Commonwealth games finalist. We have top sprinter Mike Rodgers from the USA who was part of the USA 4X100m winning relay team with a personal best of 9.80 and in the same event Michael Fraters from Jamaica who as part of the 4X100m Jamaica team with a personal best of 9.86.
“In the 400m we have Javon Francis from Jamaica, a silver medalist in the world championship and Calvin Smith, World Indoor Champion and part of the US record winning 4X400 relay team.
“As you can see we are now having the 110m hurdles with 7 athletes taking to the line with world champion and Olympic silver medalist Jason Richardson on the starting line. Bermuda has never seen this event at this level.
“All in all my committee has worked extremely hard to pull off this field of athletes and we just need the Bermuda public to come out and support this event. This will be a preview of what an Olympic, Commonwealth Games or Pan Am Games looks like in person.”
The event will take place at the National Sports Centre on Friday, April 22, 2016 from 6:30pm to 8:30pm.
The updated athletes list follows below [PDF here]:
Amazing line up this looks great.