T&T's Sam­bo team of Keron Bourne, Latisha Gill and Lashawn Slad­den will miss out on the World Cham­pi­onships Sam­bo, sched­uled to be­gin to­day in Ser­bia. It will run un­til Sun­day.

De­spite hav­ing a very suc­cess­ful record com­pet­ing abroad, the trio along­side coach War­ren Gill and Ja­son Fras­er, the head of the del­e­ga­tion, de­cid­ed to lis­ten to the voice of rea­son from their coach to skip the tour­na­ment be­cause of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. The de­ci­sion was made in ear­ly Oc­to­ber fol­low­ing a meet­ing of the coach and the tech­ni­cal team.

Yes­ter­day, dur­ing an in­ter­view at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, Fras­er who is a vice pres­i­dent at the Pan Amer­i­can Sam­bo As­so­ci­a­tion, as well as the Com­mon­wealth Sam­bo As­so­ci­a­tion, told Guardian Me­dia Sports that it was agreed to put the safe­ty of the ath­letes and of­fi­cials first, par­tic­u­lar­ly at a time when there is no vac­cine avail­able.

"It was a very hurt­ful de­ci­sion to make since T&T has nev­er missed out on a World Cham­pi­onship event since 2012. Too be­sides, the team has not trained since March, which was be­fore the first lock­down for COVID-19, so we felt that the team would not have been prop­er­ly pre­pared for the event in any way," Fras­er ex­plained.

To date, the T&T team has been to all the World Cham­pi­onships since 2012 when it was held in Be­larus. Since then the team par­tic­i­pat­ed at the World Cham­pi­onships in Rus­sia (2013); Japan (2014), Mo­roc­co (2015); Ro­ma­nia (2016); Bul­gar­ia (2017); Rus­sia (2018) and in South Ko­rea last year.

Ac­cord­ing to Fras­er, who is al­so the T&T Sam­bo As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, the coun­try has al­ways done well in the past at the cham­pi­onship and does not want to drop its stan­dard now, due to the coro­n­avirus.

Strange­ly though, Bourne who is fresh from claim­ing vic­to­ry at the Vir­tu­al On­line Pan Am Cham­pi­onship a few months ago is set to be ready phys­i­cal ac­tion. The com­pe­ti­tion was just done us­ing the the­o­ry of the sport.

Fras­er said Bourne, the 62 kg Com­bat Sports fight­er, is ready to prove his worth to the in­ter­na­tion­al sam­bo com­mu­ni­ty, hav­ing al­ready won medals and tro­phies at near­ly every event he has com­pet­ed in. Bourne won gold at the Pan Am Cham­pi­onship in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic last year, won gold at the Pres­i­dent's Cup Tour­na­ment in Ire­land in 2018 and placed fifth at the World Cham­pi­onship in Mo­roc­co in 2015, among many oth­er achieve­ments.

He part­ners with an equal­ly tal­ent­ed team of Gill, who rep­re­sent­ed the coun­try at the World Cham­pi­onship in South Ko­rea, the Pan Am in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and the Caribbean Com­bat Sports Cham­pi­onship where she won a sil­ver medal: as well as Slad­den, a gold medal win­ner at the Pres­i­dent's Cup.

The 2020 World SAM­BO Cham­pi­onships will be held in the city of Novi Sad (Ser­bia) and the tour­na­ment will be com­bined with the Youth and Ju­nior World Cham­pi­onships.

More than 400 ath­letes from 30 coun­tries are ex­pect­ed to take part in the main sport­ing event of the FIAS cal­en­dar, in­clud­ing Be­larus, Bel­gium, Bul­gar­ia, Bosnia and Herze­gov­ina, Venezuela, Greece, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, In­done­sia, Spain, Italy, Cyprus, Colom­bia, Con­go, Mo­roc­co, Mex­i­co, Moldo­va, Rus­sia, Ro­ma­nia, North Mace­do­nia, Ser­bia, USA, Tajik­istan, Uzbek­istan, Ukraine, Philip­pines, France, Croa­t­ia, Es­to­nia, South Africa.

FIAS pres­i­dent Vasi­ly Shes­takov, in a re­lease, said: "The Or­gan­is­ing Com­mit­tee of the World Cham­pi­onships has made every ef­fort to min­imise the risks of ill­ness among ath­letes at the main event of the year in the FIAS cal­en­dar. For this, all par­tic­i­pants in the com­pe­ti­tion – from ath­letes and coach­es to ref­er­ees and med­ical per­son­nel – will be re­quired to strict­ly fol­low safe­ty rules. The first step is to take a PCR test for COVID-19 72 hours be­fore ar­riv­ing in the Re­pub­lic of Ser­bia. The next one is the cre­ation of a 'clean zone' for all par­tic­i­pants of the com­pe­ti­tion, ex­clud­ing the ap­pear­ance of strangers in it, that is, all move­ments in Ser­bia will take place ex­clu­sive­ly be­tween the ho­tel and the are­na. Well, it is ob­vi­ous that un­der these con­di­tions the tour­na­ment will be held with­out spec­ta­tors.”