Barbados is targeting a multiple-medal haul at the 2028 Olympic Games, with the Athletics Association of Barbados (AAB) planning a $1.5 million-a-year elite programme to fast-track the country’s top senior athletes.
AAB President Noel Lynch unveiled the plan on Tuesday night as Barbados’ 11-member team returned from the World Junior Championships in Oregon, where the squad reached four finals and eight semi-finals.
Jayden Green highlighted the team’s performance, winning bronze in the 100m.
Lynch said the proposed programme is the next step after the success of the AAB’s junior development initiative and is aimed at giving Barbados a stronger platform to challenge for medals at the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028.
“When we won the 4x400m relay at the CARIFTA Games this year, 15 minutes hadn’t passed when the Prime Minister (Mia Mottley) called to ask what we needed to take these athletes to the next level. She has committed to it and put her money where her mouth was,” he told journalists outside the Grantley Adams International Airport’s arrivals hall.
“It’s going to look a lot like the junior programme, but we’re going to start with a small core of 10 or 12 people, who we believe are not ready yet to leave Barbados to go into the US on scholarship.
“What we’re going to do is give them a stipend. To be able to run you can’t work and stand up in nobody’s store and come back and run every evening,” he disclosed.
Members of the cohort, according to Lynch, are set to train during morning and evening sessions, while having access to massage therapy, nutritional and psychological support, in addition to vocational and academic pursuits.
He explained that the programme will also cater to athletes who have completed scholarships abroad and have returned to the island, but still have the potential to compete at the elite level.
He said that, as with the junior programme, the benefits of the senior initiative would become evident in the years ahead.
“Next year during the World Championship in China, we’re going to prove our point. We also have NACAC seniors and juniors next year and then 2028 is the Olympics. I believe we can win two or three medals in Los Angeles. People think this is pie in the sky dreaming but it is not. In the year 2000 when we told people that Obadele Thompson would win a medal they thought we were on some kind of drugs, but I am telling you Barbadians can do this,” he said.
Referencing the World Juniors, Lynch pointed out that the American 4x400m men’s relay team won gold in a time in 3:01.39, while Barbados won gold at the CARIFTA Championships in Grenada this year in record time of 3:05.49.
Lynch was adamant that a team comprising of Jayden Green, Amir Thompson, Aidan Moore and Shamari Greenidge Lewis could have beaten the USA squad. “If they ran 3.01, we could have run 3.00. We could have walked through those doors tonight with a world junior record. All the members of this team endorse that.”
Lynch said the team’s overall performance in Oregon demonstrated the progress being made through the AAB’s development programme.
“Jayden Green is potentially a nineteen second 200m runner. Amir Thompson has committed to running for Barbados and this is a man that has all the pedigree in the world. We found a new one in Taylor Foster who nobody knew about and nobody would have expected somebody like a Rashad Gibson, to advance to a semi-final in the world championships. Shot put competitor Jayden Walcott was 6th in a non-traditional event at the global level and 400m runner Kadia Rock is total class,” he explained.
Lynch said Barbados has the potential to field a world-class senior men’s 4x100m relay team and confirmed that, as with Thompson and Foster, the AAB is actively recruiting other athletes from the Barbadian diaspora.
(KH)
