De­fend­ing cham­pi­ons Didi­mo Sanchez and Raquel Agude­lo Berrio will head­line the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Sport and Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion (UWI SPEC) 16th In­ter­na­tion­al Half-Marathon and Re­lay on Sun­day.

The an­nu­al race which is be­ing pre­sent­ed by First Cit­i­zens is themed "A sound mind in a healthy body," and will be­gin and end at UWI SPEC, the St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus of UWI from 5 am. This year, the half marathon will in­clude a new fea­ture of the 4 x 5K re­lay race.

Sanchez, who won last year with a time of one hour and eight min­utes and 49 sec­onds (1:08.49), has had run sol­id tune­ups for the race with the 34-year-old Venezue­lan win­ning the To­ba­go Sea to Sea Half-Marathon and the North Amer­i­can, Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (NACAC) 10K in Guade­loupe.

He will be chal­lenged by sev­er­al elite run­ners in­clud­ing his coun­try­man Venezue­lan Pe­dro Mo­ra (42) who placed sec­ond in this year's Mara­cai­bo Half-Marathon. He rep­re­sent­ed Venezuela in the marathon at the Rio 2016 Olympics and has a per­son­al best time of 1:03.37.

An­oth­er is Kenyan Vi­tal­is Kimeli, the name­sake of UWI SPEC course record-hold­er Ernest Kimeli and a rel­a­tive of the great Kip­choge Keino. The 23-year-old has been rac­ing in Chi­na this year and his best time in four half-marathons there was 1:04.30.

Kenyan Alex Eke­sa has been in T&T since May when he placed sec­ond to Sanchez in the To­ba­go Sea to Sea Half. The 36-year-old won the But­ler 20K but lost many 5Ks (a few in sub-15) to Sher­wyn Sta­ple­ton, one of T&T's lead­ing run­ners for this event.

Sta­ple­ton (30) of T&T Road Rac­ing Club (TTR­RC) first for­ay on the road was last year. Among his ti­tles was the UWI Schol­ar­ship 5K, he placed fifth over­all at last year's UWI SPEC Half and third among the T&T run­ners.

T&T will al­so be rep­re­sent­ed by Matthew Ha­gley (32) of the De­fence Force, UWI Grad­u­ate Shir­van Ba­boolal (28) and Cur­tis Cox (51).

The women’s race will be equal­ly as com­pet­i­tive as Berrio, who won with a 1:20.34-clock­ing will be seek­ing to re­peat as cham­pi­on. The Colom­bian won the Pana­ma Marathon and the To­ba­go Sea to Sea Marathon.

Her lead­ing for­eign op­po­nents in­clude Char­i­ty Wan­jiru Mumbi of Kenya, Leah Ki­gen (40), Lin­da Mc­Dowall of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines and Zuleima Amaya of Venezuela.

Mumbi en­ters with a per­son­al best of 1:14 in the half and 34 min­utes in the 10K while Ki­gen was the 2011 UWI SPEC cham­pi­on and this will be her first time back in the race since then. She placed sec­ond in a Mex­i­can marathon ear­li­er this month and is a for­mer T&T Marathon and Run Bar­ba­dos Marathon cham­pi­on.

Mc­Dowall, this year's women's Cari­com 10K and South Amer­i­can 10K win­ner, ran the 2017 UWI SPEC while Amaya of Venezuela is a for­mer Venezue­lan marathon cham­pi­on. She placed third at last year's UWI SPEC.

In the ab­sence of Tonya Nero, Saman­tha Shuk­la, Ce­line Lestrade and Sjae­lan Evans (33) will lead the charge for the T&T women. Evans is a very grit­ty run­ner clock­ing a per­son­al best of 3:08.00 at the Boston Marathon last year when many abort­ed the race in the wet, freez­ing con­di­tions

The top four women in this year's But­ler 20K in June, Evans, Chris­tine Reg­is (56), Chantel Le Maitre (45), who was the third T&T fin­ish­er at last year's UWI SPEC and Tere­sa Otero (20), are the top-seed­ed lo­cal women par­tic­i­pants.

This year's half-marathon high­lights and sup­ports the work of the St Au­gus­tine Acad­e­my of Sport’s (SAAS) Sports Schol­ar­ship Fund, which seeks to in­crease ac­cess to ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion for re­gion­al ath­letes. The SAAS Sports Schol­ar­ship is open to Caribbean na­tion­als who are full-time UWI stu­dents and reg­u­lar­ly en­gage in sport at the elite lev­el.

A re­lay op­tion, first im­ple­ment­ed last year, proved such a suc­cess that par­tic­i­pants can again reg­is­ter a re­lay team and run the half marathon in four 5K legs. Or­gan­is­ers plan to use the re­lay hand-off zones as hubs to fa­cil­i­tate sup­port­ers, live rhythm sec­tions and food sales, as well as to en­gage the sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties in the ex­cite­ment of the mo­ment.

Speak­ing on the half-marathon and schol­ar­ships, Grace Jack­son, Di­rec­tor of UWI SPEC not­ed that the Uni­ver­si­ty is at the fore­front of ter­tiary lev­el sport de­vel­op­ment, sports aca­d­e­mics, and phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion in the Caribbean.

"I am urg­ing every­one to take up the chal­lenge and run to sup­port the SAAS Schol­ar­ship Fund. Whether you choose to walk, jog or run you will be help­ing our stu­dents as well as your­selves when you cross that fin­ish line. If you haven’t done so al­ready, please sign up!” said Jack­son.

"This year’s race is the Cam­pus’ first since the in­tro­duc­tion of new un­der­grad­u­ate pro­grammes in sport – the BSc in Sports Coach­ing and the BSc in Ki­net­ics – un­der the UWI Fac­ul­ty of Sport, rep­re­sent­ed lo­cal­ly as the St Au­gus­tine Acad­e­my of Sport. Raw tal­ent is no longer enough to stay at the top of their game and stu­dents now have ac­cess to the best lec­tur­ers and spe­cial­ists re­gion­al­ly."

The 13.1-mile route re­mains un­changed with run­ners en­joy­ing a race of the traf­fic-free Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route from St Au­gus­tine to the La Re­source Junc­tion in D’Abadie and re­turn.