RACHAEL THOMP­SON-KING

Shurlan Williams and Tonya Nero emerged as the men's and women's Open cat­e­go­ry win­ners of the Walke Street Eman­ci­pa­tion Free­dom 5K Run on Wednes­day in San­gre Grande.

It was quite an en­ter­tain­ing fin­ish as Williams was well test­ed by last year's cham­pi­on Kelvin John­son but the T&T run­ner had enough left in him to race across the line first in 16 min­utes and 25 sec­onds just ahead of the Guyanese dis­tance run­ner, who was the run­ner-up in 16.28.

Com­ing in, a not too dis­tant third, was Nicholas Ro­many in a time of 16.38 in the an­nu­al race which saw some 320 run­ners par­tic­i­pate in a course tak­ing run­ners and walk­ers through­out San­gre Grande.

Nero com­fort­ably won the women's ti­tle, clock­ing 19.58 to fin­ish ahead of Chantel Lemaitre (22.05) and Alyssa Lock­hart (23:17), re­spec­tive­ly.

The 16th edi­tion of the Eman­ci­pa­tion Day run was well at­tend­ed by vil­lagers, who were en­ter­tained by the beau­ti­ful mu­sic of the Jay Notes Steel Or­ches­tra and the Hill Top­pers Or­ches­tra.

This year’s theme "Run For Your Health", was cer­tain­ly achieved by the Walke Street Eman­ci­pa­tion Com­mit­tee, found­ed by Montsho Masim­ba 23 years ago, seek­ing to as­sist in the de­vel­op­ment of peo­ple in the San­gre Grande com­mu­ni­ty and its en­vi­rons.

The event was open to chil­dren and adults of all ages. At five years old, Chen­nai Moore was the youngest par­tic­i­pant while the old­est par­tic­i­pant Sar­ran Hanooman (81 years) was recog­nised for his per­for­mance.

In oth­er awards pre­sent­ed, Sweaters tour­ing team picked up the prize for hav­ing the largest group par­tic­i­pate and Den­n­is­ford Pa­jsee was the fastest pace walk­er.