Sean Nero

Ran­dom drug test­ing was con­duct­ed at this year's stag­ing of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) Sport and Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion Cen­tre (SPEC) In­ter­na­tion­al half marathon and the find­ings will in­spire the sport­ing fra­ter­ni­ty, says Ma­jor David Ben­jamin, di­rec­tor of the pro­gramme.

Speak­ing at Tues­day's awards cer­e­mo­ny held at UWI-SPEC's Au­di­to­ri­um at the St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus, Ma­jor Ben­jamin said, "For the first time in our event his­to­ry, we con­duct­ed ran­dom drug test­ing, post event, and I am hap­py to re­port that all per­sons test­ed re­turned a neg­a­tive re­sult. For the first time the event saw a mas­sive reg­is­tra­tion of 1,200 run­ners.

"Three weeks be­fore the event, it was sold out and we were in­un­dat­ed with call for a 'squeeze in' as we will say in lo­cal par­lance or rather ac­com­mo­dat­ed.

"Twelve hun­dred run­ners, and per­sons were still knock­ing on the doors of our event–phe­nom­e­nal."

He added: "And, yes, we start­ed on time. With mil­i­tary pre­ci­sion at 5.20 am, the wheel­chair ath­letes start­ed and then his Ex­cel­len­cy Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona sound­ed the starter's pis­tol at 5.30 am.

"We have and are still re­ceiv­ing very pos­i­tive feed­back from this time ad­just­ment and in­deed this is here to stay."

He said the in­clu­sion of en­ter­tain­ment: steel­pan, tas­sa and African drum­ming along the route was a good move. Ma­jor Ben­jamin said ath­letes have asked for it to re­main.

He said he be­lieved this fea­ture helped the ath­letes main­tain a good rhythm along the 13.1 mile event.

How­ev­er, he said, the day's event did not go off with­out hitch­es.

Ma­jor Ben­ja­main said: "Every­thing did not go as flaw­less as we would have liked, but, it is said that the true strength of a man's and woman's char­ac­ter is not test­ed un­der nor­mal cir­cum­stances, but it is when one faces ad­verse sit­u­a­tions that call for im­me­di­ate ac­tion and de­ci­sion. I think that col­lec­tive­ly the man­age­ment team of the event ac­com­plished that."

Vol­un­teers on the day re­ceived high praise, too. Had they asked for fi­nan­cial re­mu­ner­a­tion, said Ma­jor Ben­jamin, there would be no mon­ey to al­lo­cate prizes.

Hav­ing in­clud­ed cat­e­gories for per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties over the years, Ma­jor Ben­jamin said his team learnt that did not nec­es­sar­i­ly in­clude per­sons with phys­i­cal dis­abil­i­ties.

"This year, we recog­nised the omis­sion and in­vit­ed Spe­cial Olympics to part­ner with us. Spe­cial Olympics (of T&T) cater for per­sons with In­tel­lec­tu­al Dis­abil­i­ties. SOTT par­tic­i­pat­ed in a re­lay marathon," he said.

Ma­jor Ben­jamin added: "To­day is a cel­e­bra­tion of the suc­cess of every one that com­pet­ed and com­plet­ed the 13.1 mile event. It is a cel­e­bra­tion of your suc­cess. You have trained and com­mit­ted many hours to­wards this pur­suit of ex­cel­lence, and for this, to­day you reap the re­wards of your suc­cess.

"But you have, I'm sure, learned many vi­tal life lessons along this jour­ney, the man­i­fes­ta­tion of your tough­ness, your men­tal agili­ty and re­silience and all traits, which I'm sure have been de­vel­oped, if not en­hanced along the jour­ney," he said.