Among its plans to res­cue and re­vamp the Trinidad and To­ba­go In­ter­na­tion­al Marathon, Bafas­ports (by ath­letes, for ath­letes) plans to in­ter­weave var­i­ous as­pects of T&T’s cul­tur­al her­itage as well as to repo­si­tion the race to ap­peal to a broad­er par­tic­i­pa­tion base.

At a me­dia con­fer­ence on Wednes­day at their head of­fice at Bor­de Street, Port-of-Spain, Bafas­ports chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (CEO) Nigel Bel­lamy an­nounced that the pop­u­lar full-ser­vice run­ning club will take over the or­gan­i­sa­tion of the race, aim­ing to stage it in May rather than its tra­di­tion­al date on the last Sun­day in Jan­u­ary.

In­stead, there could be a half-marathon in Jan­u­ary, build­ing up to the reimag­ined main event four months lat­er.

This news comes af­ter the No­vem­ber 7 me­dia re­lease from the T&T Marathon Com­mit­tee (TTMC), head­ed by T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee pres­i­dent Di­ane Hen­der­son, which em­phat­i­cal­ly stat­ed, “TTIM 2025 has been of­fi­cial­ly can­celled.”

The re­lease ex­plained that af­ter 42 years of “un­bro­ken host­ing of this pre­mier dis­tance event,” the TTMC, which came in­to re­al­i­ty when one of the race’s sig­nif­i­cant spon­sors pulled out in 2009, had come to a de­ci­sion that “with times chang­ing and re­sources be­com­ing ever more dif­fi­cult to ob­tain, it has be­come nec­es­sary to re­tire its or­gan­i­sa­tion.”

But on Wednes­day, Bel­lamy de­clared de­fi­ant­ly, “I knew that was un­ten­able; there was no way we could let the marathon go. That was not go­ing to hap­pen on my watch.”

Bel­lamy said that his new­ly-formed com­mit­tee, which al­so in­cludes sev­er­al past mem­bers, will con­tin­ue to call on Hen­der­son’s guid­ance and that of an­oth­er long-serv­ing or­gan­is­er, Fran­cis Williams-Smith, but will im­me­di­ate­ly seek to bring fresh ideas to fruition in an at­tempt to breathe life back in­to the sig­na­ture event.

He ex­plained that con­sid­er­a­tion is be­ing giv­en to re­brand­ing and re­nam­ing the event, while Bafas­ports al­so aims to add el­e­ments that will en­hance the iden­ti­ty of the T&T Marathon.

“When I got in­volved ini­tial­ly, it was through Tony Har­ford, and he had a vi­sion for the event, which he shared with me. I was sold on it, and this is where I would lean the com­mit­tee a lit­tle bit if I could, which would be to in­volve our cul­ture very heav­i­ly.”

Bel­lamy added, “While it is sport and it is an ath­let­ic event cer­tain­ly, I do be­lieve there is room for cul­ture; there is room for stag­ing some the­atre in there, and I think Trinidad and To­ba­go is well po­si­tioned to do that. We have a unique cul­ture here and a lot of el­e­ments that can’t be found else­where, and I think if we bake a lot of those el­e­ments in­to the marathon and make it more of a cel­e­bra­tion and not just about the ath­let­ics, we will at­tract a lot more at­ten­tion and a lot more par­tic­i­pa­tion.”

At­tract­ing those spec­ta­tors and par­tic­i­pants who fall out­side of the realm of elite in­ter­ests, Bel­lamy says, is crit­i­cal to widen­ing the marathon’s gen­er­al ap­peal.

“If you look across the world, the New York Road Run­ners just put on the New York Marathon. Fifty-five thou­sand peo­ple—a frac­tion of those are ath­letes; a frac­tion of those are run­ning two-hour times; the ma­jor­i­ty are run­ning four, five, or six hours. So, they are ap­peal­ing to the av­er­age per­son, and I think that’s where we need to go. We need to get the av­er­age per­son think­ing, I can tack­le a marathon.”

To­ward this ob­jec­tive, the new marathon com­mit­tee is tout­ing sev­er­al sup­ple­men­tary events, such as a half-marathon in Jan­u­ary, as well as po­si­tion­ing the full marathon as the mar­quee event with­in the huge­ly suc­cess­ful Na­tion­al Mil­lion Mile Chal­lenge.

This chal­lenge en­cour­ages fit­ness en­thu­si­asts to log their miles com­plet­ed through var­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ties such as walk­ing, road run­ning, or even hik­ing to­ward the at­tain­ment of a col­lec­tive one-mil­lion-mile goal, which will be cen­tral to the marathon’s mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy.

“We know if you want to get some­body to tack­le 26.2 miles, the first thing you need to do is get them out of the house in the morn­ing to do a lit­tle one mile or two miles. Be­fore long, they them­selves will want more; they will get hun­gry and be com­pet­i­tive. That’s the first step; Mil­lion Mile does that. And putting the marathon as a mar­quee event there now gives peo­ple an­oth­er tar­get to do.”

In re­cent years, the TTMC has fre­quent­ly tin­kered with the marathon course, search­ing for ways to im­prove on its orig­i­nal route from the tra­di­tion­al St Mary’s Junc­tion, Freeport start-point, head­ing north along the South­ern Main Road to Curepe Junc­tion and then west along the East­ern Main Road in­to Port-of-Spain and end­ing at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah.

The 2024 edi­tion start­ed at the Sa­van­nah, pro­ceed­ed east to Tacarigua, and back, end­ing again at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah.

Bel­lamy added that while the 2025 route has not yet been set, the com­mit­tee is con­sid­er­ing at least three op­tions and al­so in­tends to have whichev­er one is se­lect­ed, in­ter­na­tion­al­ly cer­ti­fied.

“That’s al­ready in mo­tion, and it’s crit­i­cal. We will ab­solute­ly get that done; that’s a non-ne­go­tiable item for us.”

This was met with im­me­di­ate ap­proval by one of T&T’s pre­mier marathon­ers, Col­in Pereira, who is al­so a mem­ber of the com­mit­tee. 

He said, “I am hap­py that the race would be cer­ti­fied. It’s dif­fi­cult fi­nan­cial­ly to go to an­oth­er coun­try to try and get, let’s say, Olympic qual­i­fy­ing time or a Boston or New York qual­i­fy­ing time. So, it is very im­por­tant that the course is cer­ti­fied, and that in it­self will at­tract in­ter­na­tion­al ath­letes like the Kenyans be­cause they know that the times that they pro­duced will be rat­i­fied by World Ath­let­ics.”