The 38th edi­tion of the Hamp­ton In­ter­na­tion­al Games which comes off on May 25 and 26 at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo, at a cost of $1.5 mil­lion to the or­gan­is­ers will fo­cus on the de­vel­op­ment of young ath­letes, lo­cal­ly and across the Caribbean.

This was dis­closed by Noel Hy­land, pres­i­dent of host club Hamp­ton Ath­let­ics Club and the Hamp­ton In­ter­na­tion­al Games, at a me­dia brief­ing held at the Min­istry of Sport head of­fice, Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

Hy­land not­ed that in the past most of the fo­cus was placed on the elite ath­letes to high­light the games, but a de­ci­sion has been made to put more fo­cus on de­vel­op­ing the young ath­letes from the un­der-9 lev­el up­wards.

"Our lo­cal young­sters in the un­der-9, un­der-11 and un­der-13 age groups can ex­pect to be test­ed by their ri­vals from Bar­ba­dos, Mar­tinique, St Lu­cia, Suri­name, Guyana as well as Grena­da be­cause they are the fu­ture of the sport."

He not­ed that while em­pha­sis has been placed on youth, ef­forts were be­ing made to have some top elites com­pete at the two-day meet, but it will all be based on their avail­abil­i­ty from their meets in Eu­rope, es­pe­cial­ly the lu­cra­tive Di­a­mond League se­ries which gets go­ing soon.

He added, "I have spo­ken to the man­age­ment team of our sec­ond Olympic Gold medal­list Keshorn Wal­cott and they have in­di­cat­ed that he may be avail­able for the event if he is not com­pet­ing over­seas."

Hy­land was al­so full of praise for the con­tri­bu­tion of ti­tle spon­sor Bea­con In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed which has pumped $100,000 in­to the event.

"Over the past 37 years we nev­er had a ti­tle spon­sor apart from the Min­istry of Sport or the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T (Sportt) and now that Bea­con has come on board as our first ever cor­po­rate spon­sor we are very de­light­ed and look­ing for­ward to a fruit­ful part­ner­ship."

Jami­la Ban­nis­ter, Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er of Bea­con In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, in her brief ad­dress not­ed that her com­pa­ny was very pleased to be in­volved as ti­tle spon­sor for this year's stag­ing of the Hamp­ton Games.

"The­ses games have had a long his­to­ry and num­ber of world known ath­letes name­ly Us­ain Bolt, Tyson Gay, and our very own Dar­ryl Brown, Marc Burns and Em­manuel Cal­len­der have all used the Hamp­ton Games as their stomp­ing ground.

Ban­nis­ter added, "When Hy­land and his team ini­tial­ly ap­proached us for spon­sor­ship, we were im­me­di­ate­ly at­tract­ed to the idea be­cause we saw it as not on­ly an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be part of sport his­to­ry in T&T and the Caribbean, but as a chance to touch the lives of a num­ber of young peo­ple, both here in T&T and through­out the re­gion.

"As a re­gion­al or­gan­i­sa­tion, Bea­con is al­ways in­ter­est­ed in ven­tures that can reach our broth­ers and sis­ters in the oth­er Caribbean ter­ri­to­ries and the Hamp­ton Games was the ide­al op­por­tu­ni­ty to do so.

"For us, it rep­re­sents a con­ver­gence of the best sports­men and women the Caribbean has to of­fer and gives fam­i­lies a chance to be en­ter­tained in a whole­some way."

She added, "I think we can all agree that our 2012 Lon­don Olympians have re­newed our faith and pride in sport and we all want to be a part of the move­ment that will take us to Rio 2016. I want to as­sure you that Bea­con is no dif­fer­ent," she end­ed.

Heats will be held at the same venue from May 18-19.

?