By Neto Baptiste
An award ceremony aimed at recognising the outstanding performances by national athletes between 2020 and 2021 has been postponed due to a low number of nominations put forward by the national associations.
This is according to Director of Sports Heather Daley, who said that, to date, only two associations, namely bodybuilding and sailing, have made submissions ahead of the event that was planned for the second weekend in October.
“We were supposed to have a sports recognition ceremony in the absence of a national sports awards and that is something we had discussed two years ago. Obviously, it didn’t materialise and so we wanted to incorporate 2020 nominees with 2021 nominees but, unfortunately, it looks as though we may have to postpone again because of the lack of support we are getting from the associations,” she said.
The ceremony, according to Daley, will seek to recognise top performers between 2020 and 2021 after the ministry was forced to cancel the National Sports Awards on both occasions, because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Daley said the nomination period has been extended in an effort to give the associations added time in which to make their submissions before a new date is finalised for the ceremony.
“We have two more weeks in September and that is the latest we’re expecting to go. Obviously there are other things we have to put in place before we can finalise a date to make sure we could have this event come off because it’s quite unfortunate that this is happening,” the director said.
Daley said the initial email was sent out to the associations on June 21 and a follow up some time after but to no avail. The recognition ceremony will not affect the ministry’s hosting of the National Sports Awards slated for the first quarter of next year.