Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs Dar­ryl Smith ex­pressed his grat­i­tude to the main­te­nance staff at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Port-of-Spain, who man­aged to re­open the fa­cil­i­ty's A1 track for use short­ly af­ter a busy Car­ni­val sea­son.

Vis­it­ing the site on Fri­day, Min­is­ter Smith said, "This track is known for help­ing ath­letes run fast times, and the speed with which it was brought back in­to ser­vice is a record in it­self! It is an amaz­ing feat that re­quired due dili­gence on the part of every­one at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um.

"Our role at the Min­istry and Sports Com­pa­ny is to en­sure that all fa­cil­i­ties un­der our man­age­ment are safe and com­fort­able work en­vi­ron­ments for our ath­letes and their sup­port staff, who are prepar­ing for up­com­ing re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al events. The three-day record must now be the stan­dard turn­around time with any fu­ture Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties held at this fa­cil­i­ty."

Al­though the Elite Ath­lete Train­ing Fa­cil­i­ty re­mained ac­ces­si­ble to ath­letes dur­ing the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od, the ath­let­ic track was off-lim­its, ow­ing to sev­er­al large-scale events be­ing held on the main field. In light of this ac­com­mo­da­tion of cul­tur­al ac­tiv­i­ties at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, the Min­istry pro­vid­ed trans­porta­tion to al­ter­nate venues such as the Man­nie Ramjohn and Ato Boldon Sta­di­ums for those ath­letes that re­quired it.

With Olympic gold medal­list Keshorn Wal­cott and his train­ing part­ner Shakeil Wait­he al­ready back at the venue, it is ex­pect­ed that the flur­ry of ac­tiv­i­ty on the Sta­di­um track will re­sume this week as ju­nior and elite na­tion­al ath­letes con­tin­ue their prepa­ra­tion for the CARIF­TA Games (25-28 March 2016) and Olympic Games (5-21 Au­gust 2016).

One of those ath­letes, shot­put ath­lete and Sports­woman of the Year 2015 Cleopa­tra Borel who is en­ter­ing her fourth Olympic Games in Rio, con­tin­ues her prepa­ra­tion for the tit­u­lar event.

"SporTT staff re­al­ly went above and be­yond to ac­com­mo­date my train­ing ses­sions dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son, (even) on Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day."