By Neto Baptiste
Vice President of the Antigua and Barbuda Amateur Bodybuilding & Weightlifting Federation (ABABWF) and professional bikini fitness athlete, Kimberly Percival, believes there is some room for improvement but has given the body’s national championships held last Saturday a passing grade.
Following the federation’s first virtual show, Percival expressed shock over the popularity of the show given the limitations due to existing Covid-19 protocols.
“It was a new concept … Antiguans are people of habit and culture so for them to have received such a new concept in such a big way is really good. We had some concerns and we tried our best to push it and we were happy with what we were able to make happen in very short order and I expect for there to be an increase in athletes next year,” she said.
The former national bikini fitness champion said, however, that one of the areas the federation would need to improve going forward regarding their online streaming, is ensuring that the live show is only available to those who would have purchased access.
“There was not a completely automated platform that was available that allowed for private streaming and by private streaming I mean that typically you would see streams on YouTube and other public sites but in that instance the link could be shared and you can’t really make any funds out of that because once one person buys the ticket you can send it to anyone, so we had a challenge in trying to find a way that the viewing can be restricted. I think we need to play around with that and see if we could find something a little more automated because there was a lot of behind the scenes manual work that went in to setting it up,” Percival said.
Coming out of Saturday’s national championships, a team will be selected to compete at the Santo Domingo Open from October 22-24.