The Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um in Ba­co­let is be­ing con­sid­ered as an al­ter­nate venue for this year's NAAA Sagi­cor Open cham­pi­onships. The fa­cil­i­ty is the on­ly In­ter­na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ic Fed­er­a­tion (IAAF) cer­ti­fied track in the coun­try and is on­ly one equipped to host­ing the meet which is now in jeop­ardy fol­low­ing de­lays in the in­stal­la­tion of the new track at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um. On Fri­day the lo­cal track and field fra­ter­ni­ty was sent in­to shock af­ter the Sports Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SPORTT) re­vealed that the con­trac­tor, Por­plas­tic, was un­able to de­liv­er the new track by the June 15 dead­line be­cause of heavy in­clement weath­er.

How­ev­er, NAAA Sec­re­tary Al­lan Ba­boolal said his as­so­ci­a­tion will face nu­mer­ous chal­lenges to move the two day event to Ba­co­let. "The lo­gis­tics hard­ly lend it­self to hav­ing the meet in To­ba­go in a short space of time even if we have known on the June 9. There are two hol­i­days next week so we re­al­ly have three days to de­cide. As chair­man of the Games I think it is we be bur­dened as you know how we are Tri­nis op­er­ate when it is hol­i­day." Ba­boolal added To­ba­go sta­di­um is the on­ly vi­able op­tion as the cham­pi­onships have been ap­proved by the IAAF as re­lay qual­i­fi­er for the World Cham­pi­onships in Daegu, South Ko­rea from Au­gust 27 to Sep­tem­ber 4 and the 2012 Olympics in Lon­don, Eng­land."

The for­mer stock bro­ker said none of the oth­er sta­dia in Trinidad are cer­ti­fied. "Ato Boldon Sta­di­um track is on­ly one that does not have swells. If you go down to the Man­ny Ramjohn you will a lot of boils pop­ping up. How­ev­er, Ato Boldon is flat but it is dead. We had to re­paint the lines for the Ju­ve­nile and Ju­nior Cham­pi­onships."

On shift­ing to meet to a lat­er date Bo­boolal said sev­er­al of the top ath­letes may not be avail­able.

"Some of the ath­letes are sched­uled to leave for Eu­rope to com­pete in the cir­cuit where they make their liv­ing as ath­letes." The Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um was cer­ti­fied in 2005 ahead of the Carif­ta Games which were held in March that year. Iron­i­cal­ly, the last time the na­tion­al cham­pi­onships were held out­side the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um was in 2006 when the track was again be­ing re­layed. For­mer Olympic medal­list and coach of the Mem­phis Pi­o­neers Ath­let­ic Club Ed­win Skin­ner said he is still in shock on hear­ing the news. "I am still try­ing to di­gest it be­cause it came as a com­plete sur­prise to us. In fact when I heard of it I could not be­lieve it. Our ath­letes have been fine-tun­ing for it. Some of our ath­letes who are on track schol­ar­ships are back home for the meet." The 1994 Olympic 4x400m bronze medal­list said the (Mem­phis) of­fi­cials did not in­form the ath­letes un­til they could con­firm the post­pone­ment. "I did not know how true it is. You know how we in Trinidad are full of ro­mours. But then I fi­nal­ly got con­fir­ma­tion I could hard­ly be­lieve it".