The Belize delegation performed remarkably well at the 17th Central American Championships in Athletics. The competition was held over the weekend in El Salvador, and the good news is that Belize brought back a total of 12 medals- 6 of them gold. Not only that, but of the 13 new records that were broken, Belize held 6 of them- bringing our total number of record holdings to 7. Deon Sutherland the president of the Belize Athletics association spoke to us today about this remarkable achievement.
Deon Sutherland, Pres., Belize Athletic Association
"We have been at this event for years now. This is an annual event for the seven countries of Central America. We had some 22 athletes and 5 officials at this tournament which overall performance were very great. We have a total of 12 medals, 6 gold medals, which are all record breaking medals, we had 4 silver and 2 bronze."
Emanuel Pech
"Now is this to your knowledge, Belize's best overall performance at these games?"
Deon Sutherland, Pres., Belize Athletic Association
"At this event, yes. It has been. Some of the medals we had, some of the records we had - so it was just an improvement on those."
"This is remarkable, because we are the second smallest contingent at the games in terms of numbers. Second, we don't participate in a lot of the events - other events of this championship. So to actually have 6 out of the 13 records that was broken over the past weekend is definitely a great feat for a small country and a small contingent such as Belize."
And while all the track and field events are very competitive and require a great deal of endurance, certainly none is more challenging than the heptathlon. Athletes compete in seven grueling disciplines that test the limits of your endurance. The events are split in two days, but even so, it takes a great deal of skill, and sheer determination to pull off this one person relay. Today we are happy to report that Belize won the first place prize for the heptathlon this year. Katy Seals is from England by birth but over the weekend she held the Belizean flag proudly as she brought home the gold medal for this event.
Katy Sealy, Heptathlon Gold Medalist
"Well I've been representing Belize since 2010. I absolutely love it. Every time I come out here, every time we go to Central America for the championship I enjoy it. All my training is pretty much aimed towards these sort of championships. So this is a big event and I love coming out to it. I won the gold medal for the Heptathlon and also broke the Central American record and improved my own Belize national record a well. So I was really pleased."
Out of the 22 members of the Belizean delegation only 8 were non-residents. Tomorrow we will speak with the other athletes who also made their mark at this year's competition.
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