Sh­er­nice Thomas

"Awe­some" is how top 100 world-ranked archer George Vire de­scribes his ac­com­plish­ment of win­ning his fifth ti­tle at the Na­tion­al Out­door Archery Cham­pi­onship which con­clud­ed over the week­end at the Michael P Macken­zie Archery Range, Ch­aguara­mas. A to­tal of 15 archers com­pet­ed in the two-day event which was host­ed by T&T Tar­get Archery Fed­er­a­tion, with ti­tles in the men's com­pound and re­curve (men's, women's and cadet) up for the tak­ing. De­fend­ing cham­pi­ons Vire (men's com­pound), Naz­imine Roop­nar­ine (women's re­curve) and Dun­bar Roop­nar­ine (men's re­curve) all emerged vic­to­ri­ous in their events this year, while Akask Sook­nanan was crowned the cadet re­curve champ. Asked how it felt to snatch the ti­tle for the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive time, Vire told the T&T Guardian: "Awe­some.

"It was re­al­ly good com­pe­ti­tion and all the guys shot re­al­ly well. Any­one will say that it al­ways feels nice to re­tain a ti­tle." Vire, who is ranked 80th ac­cord­ing to the lat­est World Archery Fed­er­a­tion rank­ings, said he en­tered the cham­pi­onship con­fi­dent that he could come out on top all his com­peti­tors. "I was very con­fi­dent. I went in think­ing pos­i­tive­ly and I al­ways say pos­i­tive think­ing brings pos­i­tive re­sults. My best pre­vailed in the com­pe­ti­tion and I am hap­py," Vire ex­pressed. Vire first took the ti­tle in 2006 and has won the ti­tle every pro­ceed­ing year with the ex­cep­tion of 2009 when he placed sec­ond. Al­so ex­press­ing her joy in re­tain­ing her ti­tle was Naz­imine who copped the women's re­curve ti­tle. Speak­ing to the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, Naz­imine di­vulged that the vic­to­ry was ex­tra sweet as she was not sure she would be com­pet­ing at the "na­tion­als" this year since she just came off from nurs­ing a shoul­der in­jury.

In March, Roop­nar­ine sus­tained a ro­ta­tor cuff tear to her right shoul­der while par­tic­i­pat­ing at T&T's qual­i­fiers pre­ced­ing the re­gion­al qual­i­fiers for the Lon­don Olympics. Af­ter months of ther­a­py Roop­nar­ine was giv­en the "okay" from her phys­io­ther­a­pist to re­sume her train­ing in Ju­ly, leav­ing her with on­ly one month to pre­pare for the na­tion­al cham­pi­onships. "Re­tain­ing my ti­tle is an ac­com­plish­ment. I suf­fered with a right shoul­der in­jury ear­li­er this year, so to come out from that in­jury and win my ti­tle is a great ac­com­plish­ment for me. "I wasn't sure if I was go­ing to com­pete this year but, then I got the 'okay' from my phys­io­ther­a­pist to start back. So I on­ly had one month to train and start back build­ing up my con­fi­dence. "In the be­gin­ning it was a bit hard to start back but I made up my mind to go through with it. And once you set your mind to do some­thing, you can ac­com­plish any­thing."