By Neto Baptiste
The YASCO Sports Complex, the country’s lone track & field facility, could soon get that much talked about upgrade as part of the government’s plans to improve Antigua and Barbuda’s chances of medalling at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games.
This is according to Minister of Sports, Daryll Matthew, who said the proposed upgrades to the facility will be a major part of his presentation to Cabinet in two weeks on the way forward.
“We’ve done some work to upgrade the track itself. The rest of the work now involves changing facilities, gyms and so forth. We already have the estimates for those and I have a commitment from the Cabinet of Antigua and Barbuda that the funding for these will be put in place now that the economy is growing, we’ve come out of the Covid crisis and we are not at a place we can make certain investments and once that plan is presented to the Cabinet in about two or three weeks, we will present it to the public as well,” he said.
The Cabinet, last week, charges Matthrew with preparing a paper or a road map to the 2028 Games and the steps that should be taken to improve the country’s chances of medalling. The task was assigned to the minister after Matthew’s plea to “strengthen sports further” during last Wednesday’s Cabinet sitting.
The Minister said he will hold a series of high-level talks with key stakeholders as part of efforts to put the proposal in place.
“I’ll be having some meetings with my technical staff, my senior technical staff especially, to start putting things in place. I can tell you though that a big part of that is going to involve infrastructural development and by infrastructural development, I am speaking specifically about YASCO. We had given an undertaking earlier this year and it is something that has gone back several years that work as YASCO will be done and the facility has to be upgraded,” Matthew said.
Pool-based swimmers Jadon Wuilliez and Ellie Shaw both received solidarity scholarships [wildcards] to the recent Paris Olympics and joined track athletes Cejhae Greene and Joella Lloyd alongside kiteboarder Tiger Tyson, as part of a five-member team at the July 27 to August 4 Games. Greene, Lloyd and Tyson all qualified for the event.
None of the athletes made it to the second round of their respective events.
