ÐÓ°ÉÐÔ°É

The five-day ISSA/GraceKennedy Boys and Girls' Athletics Championships (Champs) begins at the National Stadium today.

Cancelled two years ago because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the meet welcomes spectators after the lifting of restrictions under the Disaster Risk Management Act by the Government. As many as 20,000 spectators, 16,500 in the bleachers, and 3,500 in the grandstand, will be accommodated each day.

While certain restrictions have been lifted, ISSA president Keith Wellington says they will keep certain protocols in place as they wanted spectators to return in a safe environment.

"Specifically, we will continue to encourage the various methods of sanitisation of equipment and individuals, hand-washing, mask-wearing, and physical distancing where possible," Wellington said during the Champs media launch last month.

After several months of intense built up, defending girls' champions Edwin Allen High School and 2019 boys' winners Kingston College (KC), seeking their 33rd title, will start as hot favourites to lift the titles on Saturday night. Both teams have displayed better all-round depth than their opponents leading up to the championships, and the head coaches are confident of victory.

"Kingston College's preparation has been good," KC head coach Leaford Grant said. "The pandemic did not affect us that much and the boys are very excited and raring to go as we expect to do well and, hopefully, at the end of the meet we are able to win."

The Michael Dyke-coached Edwin Allen are seeking to make it eight girls' titles in a row and nine overall.

"We do have a fairly young team but one with a lot of experience," Dyke said. "The girls are very confident of victory and they do feed off competition and will continue to improve as the meet goes on and will be able to stand up to any challenge. They have been prepared for any situation and I am very confident that they are ready to lift the title once again."

Action starts at 9 this morning with the preliminary round of the Class One Boys Long Jump, but there will be no finals contested on day one.

Overall, there will be 30 events over two sessions today with seven in the field and 23 on the track.

The 100m will also be on track today and this is the first Champs where the event starts on the opening day. This allows for the final to take place on Wednesday instead of its traditional fourth day (Friday) to allow athletes the chance to do the sprint double.

The finals start with the girls at 6:40 p.m. on Wednesday night and the boys five minutes later.

A lot of interest will surround the female event as fans expect a sub-11 second clocking. Hydel High School's Brianna Lyston will battle Edwin Allen's twin sisters Tia and Tina Clayton.

Lyston, who dominated five years ago as a 12-year-old in Class Four while competing for St Jago High, registered world age-group records in both the 100m and 200m but was hit by injuries as the twins went on to dominate in Class Three and Class Two.

Now at Hydel, Lyston is back to her best and is the hottest young female sprinter locally with personal best times of 11.14 and 22.66 seconds over the 100 and 200m, respectively, this season. Tina is the World Athletics Under-20 champion with a personal best time of 11.09 and a season's best 11.39. Tia has a season's and personal best of 11.41.