Falo­mi Mar­cano of First Cit­i­zens suc­cess­ful­ly de­fend­ed her ti­tle while Kirk Abra­ham of Cen­tral Bank of T&T (CBTT) emerged vic­to­ri­ous in the men’s di­vi­sion at the Car­iFin Games’ Aer­o­bics Burnout at Cen­tral Bank Plaza on Wednes­day.

The 2025 edi­tion of the Games reached new heights of en­er­gy and com­pe­ti­tion as 120 par­tic­i­pants from the fi­nan­cial ser­vices sec­tor bat­tled it out in the fit­ness event.

Un­der the theme “Move, Con­nect, Trans­form”, the sev­enth event in this year’s nine-card se­ries saw fi­nan­cial pro­fes­sion­als push their phys­i­cal lim­its in one of the most an­tic­i­pat­ed and dra­mat­ic com­pe­ti­tions of the Car­iFin cal­en­dar.

Mar­cano se­cured her sec­ond con­sec­u­tive Aer­o­bics Burnout win and what she es­ti­mates to be her fifth to sev­enth vic­to­ry over­all in the com­pe­ti­tion. She en­dured an im­pres­sive one hour and sev­en min­utes be­fore be­ing crowned cham­pi­on, with her First Cit­i­zens col­leagues erupt­ing in ju­bi­lant cel­e­bra­tion, wav­ing flags and run­ning around their cham­pi­on in a dis­play of team sol­i­dar­i­ty.

In the men’s di­vi­sion, Abra­ham won with a time of one hour, six min­utes and 25 sec­onds, fol­lowed by Josi­ah Ri­ley from the Min­istry of Fi­nance in sec­ond place with a time of 48 min­utes and 35 sec­onds. Josi­ah Charles, al­so from the Min­istry of Fi­nance, se­cured third place with a time of 47 min­utes and 28 sec­onds. Mar­vin Springer of Sco­tia­bank fin­ished fourth with a time of 47 min­utes and 12 sec­onds, while Matthew Williams of T&T Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion (UTC) round­ed out the top five with a time of 40 min­utes and 28 sec­onds.

The women’s com­pe­ti­tion was equal­ly fierce, with Adona Fran­cois of Sagi­cor claim­ing sec­ond place with a time of one hour, five min­utes and 59 sec­onds be­fore re­ceiv­ing a red card and leav­ing the floor. Es­la An­tho­ny se­cured third place with a time of one hour, three min­utes and 38 sec­onds. Kai Em­manuel of UTC fin­ished fourth with a time of one hour and 43 sec­onds, while Chen­nelle Mil­lette of the Min­istry of Fi­nance round­ed out the top five with a time of 55 min­utes and 54 sec­onds.

The com­pe­ti­tion reached its cli­max when the bat­tle nar­rowed down to just Mar­cano and Abra­ham on the floor, with the in­struc­tor push­ing both com­peti­tors to their ab­solute lim­its in a bid to de­ter­mine the ul­ti­mate cham­pi­on.

“Hon­est­ly, the crowd re­al­ly, re­al­ly mo­ti­vat­ed me to­day,” said Mar­cano in a post-event in­ter­view. “Be­cause I knew that my cowork­ers, col­leagues were there and came out and they were cheer­ing me — that gave me the ex­tra oomph to just push for­ward and try and win this thing.”

The vic­to­ry high­light­ed Mar­cano’s pas­sion for move­ment. “I love aer­o­bics. My pas­sion is move­ment. I think that’s my call­ing — move­ment,” she ex­plained. “I would jump to do aer­o­bics right now, even though I have just done aer­o­bics. I would jump to dance. I would just jump to move be­cause I think that move­ment is life.”

For Abra­ham, the com­pe­ti­tion marked his first par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Car­iFin Games.

“Hon­est­ly, I don’t re­al­ly train,” he re­vealed. “My thing is just dur­ing lunchtime at the bank, I go to the gym, do ba­sic weightlift­ing and a lit­tle car­dio.”

Abra­ham cred­it­ed his CBTT col­leagues, wife, and chil­dren for en­cour­ag­ing him to par­tic­i­pate. “A lot of my col­leagues were be­hind me. They no­ticed that I’m very ac­tive and en­er­getic when it comes to sport­ing events.”

The Aer­o­bics Burnout, led by head in­struc­tor Thorne Fer­nan­dez and his team, com­bined high-en­er­gy moves with strate­gic point-scor­ing across mul­ti­ple cat­e­gories, in­clud­ing event wins, par­tic­i­pa­tion lev­els, se­nior per­son­nel in­volve­ment, uni­for­mi­ty, team pre­sen­ta­tion, and team spir­it.

With Sco­tia­bank cur­rent­ly hold­ing the 2025 Car­iFin cham­pi­on tro­phy, the com­pe­ti­tion re­mains fierce with just two events left on the cal­en­dar. The cur­rent over­all stand­ings af­ter six events show Sco­tia­bank lead­ing with 614.17 points, fol­lowed by Cen­tral Bank of T&T (595.40), Min­istry of Fi­nance (586.22), UTC (548.36), First Cit­i­zens (524.75), Sagi­cor (504.68), and T&T Mort­gage Bank (446.00).

The Car­iFin Games con­tin­ued on Sat­ur­day with its foot­ball tour­na­ment at Re­pub­lic Bank Sports Fa­cil­i­ties in Barataria, and on May 25, will be the Car­iFin Fam­i­ly Day & Fi­nals at Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah in Port-of-Spain.