With the re­cent Olympic gold medal suc­cess of Keshorn Wal­cott in the men's javelin at the Lon­don Olympics Games, long stand­ing To­co track and field mae­stro John An­dal­cio is call­ing for the con­tin­u­a­tion of the Na­tion­al Throws pro­gramme in the vil­lage.

In a let­ter to the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ics Ad­min­stra­tions (NAAA), An­dal­cio called on the or­gan­i­sa­tion to con­tin­ue pro­vide fund­ing for Ish­mael Lopez Mas­tra­pa, the Cuban coach who pre­pared Wal­cott for his Olympic suc­cess and al­so sev­er­al oth­er ju­nior ath­letes to na­tion­al and re­gion­al glo­ry in re­cent years.

"(Re­cent) ath­let­ic sea­sons have yield­ed tremen­dous re­sults for the ath­letes from the North Coast re­gion in gen­er­al, with out­stand­ing per­for­mances from the throw­ers in­clud­ing Kyle Preud­homme, Hakim Smith, Jamel Paul and all-rounder Cherisse Mur­ray. Wal­cott has con­sis­tent­ly bro­ken the na­tion­al record with fan­tas­tic per­for­mances over the last two years de­spite be­ing a rel­a­tive novice in the event. This was achieved in no small part with the as­sis­tance of coach Is­mael Lopez Mas­tra­pa and great sac­ri­fice on the part of the re­gion's ath­letes and club of­fi­cials."

The IAAF cer­ti­fied mul­ti-event coach and of­fi­cial con­tends that the cost of hav­ing Mas­trapha trav­el to To­co is con­sid­er­able less than the ex­pens­es in­curred for To­co ath­letes trav­el to Port of Spain to train.

"Two week­ly ses­sions are pro­posed for Tues­days and Thurs­days where Lopez will work with se­lect­ed ath­letes from 10.00 am-12.30 pm.

"A small stipend of $200 per ses­sion is re­quest­ed to com­pen­sate for his ef­fort and to cov­er ex­pens­es e.g. de­fray the cost of trans­port to and from To­co, and the pro­vi­sion of lunch.

"This arrange­ment makes it much cheap­er for the NAAA, since it has cost ap­prox­i­mate­ly $700 per ses­sion when the club had to trans­port its ath­letes to the Port of Spain train­ing venue. The club al­so had to wait for a year to get some re­im­burse­ment."

The re­tired school prin­ci­pal is al­so seek­ing res­o­lu­tion to the re­cent split in the To­co TAFAC ath­let­ic club. An­dal­cio, pres­i­dent of the club, said one ath­lete was threat­ened that he will not re­ceive as­sis­tance (from the NAAA) to train if he fails to join the new break-away club in To­co.

"The ath­lete has re­turned to train­ing with To­co TAFAC and he has been threat­ened that he will not re­ceive the as­sis­tance un­less he joins the new club."

An­dala­cio said the threat was re­peat­ed by an­oth­er coach.

Mean­while, at the re­cent NAAA gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ing, clubs called on the ex­ec­u­tive to pay coach­es the out­stand­ing monies owed to them, and al­so to change the na­tion's ab­bre­vi­a­tion from TRI to TNT or T&T.

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