UTECH MEET NOT SO CLASSIC

A few years ago I took my wife to see one of the movies in the Lord of the Rings series of movies. She was reluctant to go but she came anyway. However, once the movie started she kept muttering to herself  ”Three hours of my life I will never get back.” Her comments were usually followed by a long, deep sigh. In time I stopped enjoying the movie and started feeling guilty. I was even a little mad at her for ruining the experience for me.

On Saturday night when I walked out of the National Stadium at minutes to 9 p.m. I found myself muttering those same words my wife uttered all those years ago and I truly understood where she was coming from. I will never get back the eight or so hours I spent at the national stadium for a spark of excitement that I expected but never really came. Yes, there was Warren Weir’s 20.33s season opener in the 200 metres, Kemar Bailey-Cole’s impressive ‘no-effort’ jog over the same distance, and Stephanie McPherson’s 50.74s run over the quarter mile but the day was such a disaster it overshadowed those outstanding performances and possibly blighted the opportunities for this meet to grow in years to come. Truth be told is that the leg cramp suffered by Yohan Blake and the hamstring injury suffered by Shericka Jackson served as more of a microcosm of how badly things went on a day when everything just seemed to drag on and on and on with no end in sight.

First of all, the organizers must be aware that more is not always better. A 12-hour schedule for a meet that is not a development meet is downright ridiculous. When I got to the stadium shortly after 1 pm, among the first comments I overheard was how boring the meet was. When I walked into the Grand Stand proper, the scattering of patrons was embarrassing. The overwhelming boredom etched on the faces of the few that had gathered was difficult to behold.

The first mistake, in my opinion, was the attempt to make this meet into a glorified high school meet. Champs are over and the euphoria with it. The Utech Classic, I would guess, would have been created to showcase the exceptional talent that exists at the collegiate and club level in Jamaica. If my memory serves me in the first couple of years at the Classic, Asafa Powell, Shericka Williams, Sherone Simpson and Brigitte Foster Hylton, were the names used to sell this meet. So if the intent was to show off our collegians and Olympians, why did the organizers want to use high school stars to hock the meet? The question is even more relevant when Olympians Shelly Ann Frazer, Sherone Simpson, Anneisha McCloughlin, Shericka Williams, Michael Frater, Warren Weir, Yohan Blake and Kemar Bailey-Cole were potentially going to be on show. As it turns out Frazer-Pryce, the two-time female Olympic 100m champion was a no show (I am not sure if she was down to compete) as was the case with Olympic silver medalist Sherone Simpson, who was seen at the stadium earlier in the day but also did not compete. I am wondering if it was the scheduling of their events that prompted their non-participation.

The better format, I believe, would be to have a four to five hour meet (even though that is still a bit long) that would include open relays for high schools (4x1s and 4x4s) and have the remainder of events focused on the nation’s best collegiate and club athletes. Because of the overwhelming influx of high school events many of which had only two participants or participants from one school, the meet was stretched out to the point of breaking. Late in the evening, the University of Albany, the only foreign-based invitee ran alone in the mile relay. It was just one of many blunders for the organizers.

The original schedule of the meet listed the 4x100m prep/primary school races as scheduled to start at 9:20 a.m. and the shot putt under-17 girls and boys also at the same time. But here’s the question; were there going to be two throwing rings operating at the same time with two sets of officials? This is the kind of thing that suggested that the planners were either short on experience or long on naivete. Later on in the day, the discus for men that was scheduled to start at 6:10, never got going until about two hours later and throwers complained that because of time constraints there were being limited to only four throws. One thrower said the throwers have a right to feel slighted because it had been happening all season long. Earlier this season, the lights at the National Stadium were turned off while the throwers were still competing at the Douglas Forrest Invitational. It was something the organizers of the Utech Classic didn’t take the opportunity to learn from.

Such was the blundering that at a meet that was supposed to be ‘international’, organizers were also forced to merge the Under-17 and Under-20 high jump. There was even a point when the meet organizers more than an hour behind schedule were forced to cancel events just to get things back on track. And, why would you have an official opening ceremony two hours before the scheduled end of the meet. All it did was subject the patrons already subjected to the protracted proceedings to even greater agony.

A shorter meet would have condensed the outstanding performances from Weir, McPherson and surprising appearance from Michael Frater, who ran a sharp back-stretch on a Racers sprint relay team into a nicer, more tolerable package that would have given patrons more value for money.

Overall, the meet was a disaster and going forward it is going to be a harder sell to sponsors. Despite the challenges over the first five years, there was some quality to the Utech classic, qualities that could have been built on to make this meet possibly one of the best ever local meets in the near future. However, after Saturday’s debacle I suspect that things may very well have to be rebuilt from scratch.