Small islands with big hearts at Pan Am Games 2007

While Jamaica nonetheless won three gold and four silver medals on the track this was not anywhere near the quantities normally associated with them at the annual Carifta Games. Their sting was taken out of the Jamaicans’ tails by the performances of the athletes from the small islands of the region. Shocked, there was little of the bravado usually emergent from the Jamaican camp.

Trinidad and Tobago suffered badly on the track with Darryl Browne withdrawing from the Games due to injury and only Cleopatra Borel-Browne making it to the medal table for the bronze in the women’s shot put.

Barbados failed to get among the medals on the track, much to their own surprise and disappointment.

SVG at the Games

St Vincent and the Grenadines main medal hopes were on Kineke Alexander and Pamenos Ballantyne.

Ballantyne missed his flight and the Games in the process due to some entanglement with the law here at home. The incident was a very costly one for the NOC given the cost of the ticket and the way the circumstances unfolded, to say nothing of the difficulties experienced in communications.

At the Inaugural NACAC Open Championships in San Salvador, El Salvador, one week earlier, Adonson Shallow copped a silver medal in the men’s discus throw while Kineke Alexander won bronze in the 400m. The other athletes did not do well.

At the Pan Am Games, Alexander received a grand slam on the eve of the 400m semi-finals when the assistant coach at her university emailed her the sad news of the death from cancer of her coach earlier that day. A morning session with a sports psychologist the next morning was not enough to stem the impact of the news and she faltered out of the qualifiers for the finals.