Men's and women's cham­pi­on George Towett and Leah Kir­jen, will be re­turn­ing to de­fend their crowns in the ninth edi­tion of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Sport and Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion Cen­tre (UWI SPEC) In­ter­na­tion­al Half Marathon, which will run off on Oc­to­ber 28 at UWI, St Au­gus­tine. The duo along with record-hold­ing Amer­i­can Mary Akor will be among the 1000 plus lo­cal, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al ath­letes who will be com­pet­ing for $135,000 in prizes. The event, sanc­tioned by the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ics Ad­min­is­tra­tions (NAAA), was launched yes­ter­day at the Of­fice of the Prin­ci­pal, UWI, St Au­gus­tine. It was at­tend­ed by Min­is­ter of Sport Anil Roberts, UWI prin­ci­pal Clement Sankat, All Sport Pro­mo­tions di­rec­tor An­tho­ny Har­ford, along with sev­er­al oth­er stake­hold­ers and spon­sors. The race has been most sig­nif­i­cant­ly fund­ed by First Cit­i­zens, which has pumped $475,000 in­to its stag­ing.

As an­nounced, the race will be­gin at UWI SPEC, con­tin­ue along the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route to the La Re­source junc­tion in D'Abadie, be­fore dou­bling back. There will be race cat­e­gories spe­cif­ic to UWI stu­dents and staff, Uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents and wheel­chair, as well as phys­i­cal­ly-chal­lenged com­peti­tors, among many oth­ers. It will be elec­tron­i­cal­ly timed and any new records will be recog­nised world­wide as the event is AIMS and In­ter­na­tion­al Am­a­teur Ath­let­ics Fed­er­a­tion (IAAF) cer­ti­fied. Par­tic­i­pa­tion is said to have in­creased over 300 per­cent from its orig­i­nal par­tic­i­pa­tion of 300 run­ners in 2004. UWI?prin­ci­pal Clement Sankar spoke at the launch and in­sist­ed with the coun­try's re­cent suc­cess­es at the Lon­don Olympics should be com­ple­ment­ed with a rise in in­vest­ment in sport. "The Lon­don Olympic Games has with­out a doubt hint­ed that with more in­vest­ment and fo­cus in sports, our coun­try and re­gion can rise to even high­er lev­els as the Caribbean con­tin­ues to re­ceive more and more in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion for its ex­cel­lence in sports." "We need to there­fore look more ag­gres­sive­ly at the en­tre­pre­neur­ial side of sport and the sub­stan­tial eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits that can ac­crue to our coun­try and re­gion," said Sankat.