NACAC chief wants elite athletes to compete in region

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (CMC) – The President of the North America, Central America and Caribbean Athletic Associations (NACAC), Victor Lopez wants to see more of the top athletes in the region compete in track and field meets within the confederation.

Lopez said the challenge for NACAC is to ensure that its best talents are available for the regional meets including Area Permit and IAAF World Challenge Meets.He said that many of the elite athletes have opted to compete in Europe where the appearance and performance fees are better.“One of my targets is to make sure that our top athletes compete in our meetings,” said Lopez who was elected in August to complete the four-year term of the late Neville ‘Teddy’ McCook.“We develop them, they get to that level where Usain (Bolt) is, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce is and so forth and they might run in Jamaica because they might be obliged to be in the Jamaica Invitational but from there they just go Europe and we don’t see them or they go to New York or Eugene (Oregon) because those are Diamond Leagues and the appearance fees are better.”Lopez, who also heads the Association of Pan-American Athletics (APA), said the Caribbean circuit is increasing with Challenge Meets in Ponce (Puerto Rico) and Kinston (Jamaica) and Area Permit Meets in the Bahamas, Cayman Islands and British Virgin Islands.“We’ve been discussing the difficulty of our athletes getting lanes and performance fees in Europe. Most of the money goes to big athletes,” he said.In addressing this difficulty, Lopez said that NACAC would be increasing the level of one-day meetings in the Caribbean. “Hopefully we are able to have our meetings between April and May and then we leave June for National Championships, in July our major championships (CAC & NACAC) and then the athletes could go to Europe.”Lopez said that the Council and Congress of NACAC have approved a NACAC Senior Championships, tentative to start in 2015. He said such a championship will be an incentive for regional athletes since the area champion could advance with an A standard to the World Championships.“We’re going to start that in 2015 and there are already three sites interested in hosting the first version of that – USA, Dominican Republic and Mayagüez, Puerto Rico,” he said.“So hopefully we could get that championships become very popular with our top athletes and we hope to have a good marketing programme with that championship.”Lopez said that the future of track and field in the region looks encouraging and could be financially rewarding to athletes with interests from major sponsors including ESPN, Scotiabank, Gatorade, and Mondo.“We already have five or six sponsors coming on board and they are interested in CARIFTA Games but we would like to have them on CAC and NACAC Seniors. I believe in the past the effort was not strong so I will be strong on that we’ve been the athletes and the product,” he said.Lopez was elected president at the NACAC Congress in Moscow last month to serve out the term left vacant by the veteran Jamaican administrator McCook who died in February.Like our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/jamaicaobserverFollow us on Twitter https://twitter.com/JamaicaObserver

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NACAC chief wants elite athletes to compete in region