Alex Eke­sa and Alex­ia John ran away with the re­spec­tive men’s and women’s ti­tles when the RBC Roy­al Bank host­ed the tenth edi­tion of the Race for the Kids (RFTK), with some 5,300 reg­is­trants at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, with the fin­ish line at Queen’s Roy­al Col­lege on Sep­tem­ber 14.

RBC’s RFTK is a glob­al se­ries of char­i­ta­ble run­ning events that have col­lec­tive­ly raised over $104 mil­lion in glob­al fundrais­ing to sup­port youth-fo­cused char­i­ties.

In April, the Cay­man Is­lands host­ed a race to sup­port One2One, a non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion that pro­vides chil­dren and young adults with pos­i­tive, sus­tain­able men­tor­ing re­la­tion­ships.

The Kenyan-born 42-year-old Eke­sa won the men’s 15K crown in a time of 48 min­utes and 47 sec­onds, with Christo­pher Mitchell tak­ing the sil­ver in 50.37 and vet­er­an Cur­tis Cox, third in 58.01.

Among the women, John was first across the fin­ish line in one hour, five min­utes, and 23 sec­onds, well clear of Ce­line Lestrade, who fin­ished sec­ond in 1:10.16, while Zara Suite-Stew­art took the third spot in 1:11.00.

In the 5K event, Keron Ali won the men’s edi­tion in 15.46 in a close bat­tle with Don­nell Fran­cis (15.48) while Jay­den Alexan­der se­cured the bronze medal in 17.19. In the women’s cat­e­go­ry, Chen­nai Moore se­cured the top spot in 19.37, with Akeila Skeete sec­ond in 21.35, and Adri­an­na Gar­cia, third in 22.16.

Para-ath­letes al­so shared the spot­light on the morn­ing with Shi­va Kan­hai com­plet­ing the 15K course in a time of 1:20.58, fol­lowed by Levi Mo­hammed, who did the 5K in 1:28.48.

And among the Spe­cial Olympic ath­letes, An­to­nio Sorzano clocked a time of 28.56 to earn him­self the top spot in the 5K cat­e­go­ry.

The race was RBC Roy­al Bank’s ma­jor fundrais­ing for its RBC Chil­dren’s Can­cer Fund, which as­sists young peo­ple di­ag­nosed with can­cer across the re­gion. Over the past decade, the fund has re­ceived an ad­di­tion­al TTD 6.4 mil­lion from the stag­ing of the Race.

At the con­clu­sion of the races at QRC Grounds, the par­tic­i­pants re­ceived good­ie bags and were en­ter­tained by the sounds of RBC Re­demp­tion Sound Set­ters and treat­ed to spon­sor give­aways.

There were al­so spe­cial prizes for Team RBC, with not on­ly run­ners win­ning in in­di­vid­ual cat­e­gories but al­so recog­ni­tion for the top three units that had the most reg­is­trants and those who raised the most mon­ey to do­nate to the Fund.

Ad­dress­ing the gath­er­ing, Marc Jar­dine, Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor, RBC Roy­al Bank, T&T, thanked those in at­ten­dance for sup­port­ing the event.

“This day is all about help­ing chil­dren in the fight against can­cer,” em­pha­sised Jar­dine. “Host­ing this event brings out a re­mark­able spir­it of care, sup­port, and ad­vo­ca­cy, unit­ing many in the fight against child­hood can­cer.”

While on stage, Jar­dine took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to recog­nise a stal­wart in the run­ning com­mu­ni­ty, 72-year-old Su­san­nah Joe­field, who has been sup­port­ing the RBC Race for the Kids from in­cep­tion and pre­sent­ed her with a com­mem­o­ra­tive tro­phy and a gift vouch­er spon­sored by Kapok Ho­tel.

Fond­ly known as Granny Joe­field, she has en­tered many run­ning com­pe­ti­tions both lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, eg, World Se­nior Games, Am­s­ter­dam Marathon (2024) and Swe­den World Mas­ters Ath­let­ic Cham­pi­onships (2024). In No­vem­ber, she is sched­uled to go to Mex­i­co for the North Amer­i­ca, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca (NACAC) Caribbean Mas­ters Games.

RBC’s RFTK has in­creased in pop­u­lar­i­ty every year, earn­ing much-need­ed mon­ey for the RBC Chil­dren’s Can­cer Fund, en­abling fam­i­lies to per­se­vere dur­ing the dif­fi­cul­ties they face when deal­ing with a child af­fect­ed by can­cer.

“Child­hood can­cer con­tin­ues to be a sig­nif­i­cant health con­cern in the Caribbean, with the most com­mon types be­ing leukaemia, brain tu­mours, and lym­phomas,” said Jar­dine. “Where we can help young peo­ple ac­cess spe­cialised care and treat­ment, it’s a chance to im­prove sur­vival rates,” he not­ed.

RBC works with the T&T Can­cer So­ci­ety to iden­ti­fy chil­dren in need of help and fund ad­di­tion­al test­ing, care, and treat­ment for them. In 2012, funds were al­so used to pur­chase and in­stall spe­cial equip­ment at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex to di­ag­nose leukaemia more ac­cu­rate­ly at an ear­ly stage and, more re­cent­ly, pur­chase a bone mar­row as­pi­rate nee­dle. To date, al­most 350 chil­dren across the Caribbean have re­ceived as­sis­tance with their treat­ment re­quire­ments.

“As in pre­vi­ous years, the reg­is­tra­tion fee is a di­rect do­na­tion to the RBC Caribbean Chil­dren’s Can­cer Fund, and we gen­er­ate ad­di­tion­al fund­ing from staff and do­na­tions from the pub­lic,” said Jar­dine. “I am very pleased with the turnout we had, as it demon­strates that peo­ple still care to help wor­thy caus­es.”

Hazel-Ann Mar­shall, Se­nior Mar­ket­ing Man­ag­er at the Bank, said it was a proud mo­ment to wit­ness the tenth an­niver­sary race.

“Grow­ing from 600 to 5,300, this race was noth­ing short of epic - the sea of blue of thou­sands, the en­er­gy, the en­thu­si­asm and most im­por­tant­ly, the over­whelm­ing sup­port. Know­ing that we are mak­ing a pos­i­tive im­pact on young peo­ple is the true re­ward,” she said.

Among oth­er prize win­ners on the day were Kiss Bak­ing Com­pa­ny, Nagi­co In­sur­ance and Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors Lim­it­ed for hav­ing the first, sec­ond and third largest cor­po­rate teams re­spec­tive­ly at the race. In the schools’ cat­e­go­ry, St Joseph’s Con­vent, Port-of-Spain’s Con­vent Strong team earned the ti­tle for the largest sec­ondary school team for the sixth year run­ning. They were fol­lowed by Vish­nu Boys Hin­du Col­lege from Cou­va and Holy Name Con­vent, Port of Spain. Among the pri­ma­ry schools, Rosary Boys RC had the largest con­tin­gent, fol­lowed by St Gabriel’s Girls RC School, San Fer­nan­do and Sa­cred Hearts Girls RC.