Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Sec­re­tary Al­lan Ba­boolal said the NAAA was banned from view­ing the in­stal­la­tion of the new run­ning track at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um. Speak­ing on a ra­dio pro­gramme on the Sat­ur­day, Ba­boolal said NAAA pres­i­dent Ephraime Ser­rette told him the or­gan­i­sa­tion was de­barred from the sta­di­um. "What I have heard from Ser­rette is that the NAAA is banned the sta­di­um. "The NAAA ap­point­ed Ser­rette to over­see the re­lay­ing work and re­port to the ex­ec­u­tive," he said.

Ba­boolal, who is al­so chair­man of the NAAA's games com­mit­tee, said Ex­ec­u­tive Man­ag­er of Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment of the Sports Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SPORTT) was ap­point­ed to li­aise with Serette. "On an on­go­ing ba­sis be­fore last week he spoke to Ser­rette and was up­dat­ing the pres­i­dent of the world. "Ser­rette told me that Joseph told him that the track would have been com­plet­ed (last) Wednes­day and paint­ed by (last) Fri­day," said Ba­boolal. "Af­ter I heard that I felt hap­py be­cause that meant the last would have been com­plet­ed one week ahead of the Na­tion­al Open Cham­pi­onships."

Ba­boolal said he then set up a meet­ing with the Sta­di­um man­ag­er John Jef­freys for 10 am (on Fri­day) to fi­nalise prepa­ra­tions for the Cham­pi­onships. "That meet­ing was not nec­es­sar­i­ly about the track be­cause hear­ing that it would have been com­plet­ed I want­ed to dis­cuss with him all the lo­gis­tics like the me­dia area, the dop­ing con­trol room." Ba­boolal fur­ther ex­plained that the Jef­freys asked for the meet­ing to be pushed back by one hour. How­ev­er, he re­vealed that the sta­di­um Man­ag­er sub­se­quent­ly called him to say the meet­ing was off as the track would not be com­plet­ed on time. "When he (Jef­freys) called he said the meet­ing is off be­cause the Sports Com­pa­ny said that there should be no meet­ing as the track would not be ready." Ba­boolal said his as­so­ci­a­tion on­ly got of­fi­cial word of de­lay in the com­ple­tion of the track by press re­lease on Fri­day (17) at the same time the me­dia was in­formed.