Tuesday, May 20, 2014
By BRENT STUBBS
Senior Sports Reporter
bstubbs@tribunemedia.net
AT one time, Maryann Higgs-Clarke and Anthony Bullard were among the top track and field athletes in the country and in the Caribbean region. Neither of them, however, got the opportunity to compete around the world as a professional athlete at the international level.
But today, both Higgs-Clarke and Bullard are eager to be serving as volunteers as the world comes to the Bahamas to compete in the inaugural IAAF World Relays Bahamas this weekend at the new Thomas A Robinson National Stadium.
“I think it’s great. We are advertising the Bahamas and as the first to host the World Relays is just awesome,” said Higgs-Clarke. “So I’m expecting our team to do very well. All of them may not make it to the final, but we are hoping that some of them will be able to break the national record. So I’m wishing them every success.”
The former St Augustine’s College speedster, who excelled in the 100, 200 and 400 metres, said just having the opportunity to serve as a volunteer is making up for the fact that she never really got to compete on a consistent basis on the international scene. But she is delighted to watch as her daughter, Lanece Clarke, makes her appearance as a member of the women’s 4 x 400 relay team.
“I’m looking forward to watching it and hope that all goes well,” said Higgs-Clarke, who stopped competing in 1982. “After seeing all of the excitement with the athletes going from country to country, sometimes it’s a bit disappointing, but that’s how it goes.”
Although she has some regrets that she never got a chance to travel around the world to compete as a professional athlete, Higgs-Clarke, who has ran personal bests of 53 seconds in the 400m, 24.04 in the 200m and 11.71 in the 100m, said she’s just excited to see the IAAF bring the World Relays here.
“There’s still a lot of work going on, but I think it’s going to be a magnificent event,” she said.
The two-CARIFTA multiple medallist (three gold and two silver in 1978) and (two gold and three silver in 1980) said the public can look for some spectacular performances from the Bahamian athletes, especially the girls 4 x 400m relay team.
“You never know what can happen,” she said. “They went to the World Championships and now they are here to compete in the World Relays. I think they have the potential to do something really great here. This is going to be very exciting. I wished I could compete, but since I can’t, I want to be right here cheering and supporting the team.”
For Bullard, who competed from 1975-1985 as a perennial 400m national record holder at 45.8 seconds, his only regret is that he has also retired.
“With that beautiful track out there, I wish it was back in my day,” he said. “To look back from yesterday to now, I sure wished I was competing in this era. Although I didn’t get to compete on the world stage, I still had a chance to compete in Mexico, Bermuda, Barbados and Trinidad. It’s totally different now. You get to travel to so many countries around the world.”
Now assisting the Local Organising Committee as a member of the Transportation Committee, Bullard said he’s looking forward to watching the Bahamian athletes compete, especially the men, led by Chris ‘Fireman’ Brown.
“I wish I was running on his team,” Bullard said.
To the Bahamian public, Bullard said it’s going to be important to come out and cheer on the team. “You can’t stay home and watch it. You need to be here to cheer them on,” said Bullard, who remembered how the Bahamian people were at the stadium cheering for the CARIFTA teams in 1976 and 1978 when he got bronze in both the under-17 and under-20 400m. “Come on out and support your country.”
Higgs-Clarke and Bullard may not be suited up in a Bahamian uniform, but they both intend to be in their aqua, gold and black colours in the stands.
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242orgetslu says...
PLEASE READ AND PASS ON!
This is the link where the full story is: http://si.com/vault/article/magazine/MA…
Across the inky-blue Gulf Stream from Florida, near the sheer edge of the Great Bahama Bank, a new island is emerging from the sea. Although it bears the appealing name Ocean Cay, this new island is not, and never will be, a palm-fringed paradise of the sort the Bahamian government promotes in travel ads. No brace of love doves would ever choose Ocean Cay for a honeymoon; no beauty in a brief bikini would waste her sweetness on such desert air. Of all the 3,000 islands and islets and cays in the Bahamas, Ocean Cay is the least lovely. It is a flat, roughly rectangular island which, when completed, will be 200 acres and will resemble a barren swatch of the Sahara. Ocean Cay does not need allure. It is being dredged up from the seabed by the Dillingham Corporation of Hawaii for an explicit purpose that will surely repel more tourists than it will attract. In simplest terms, Ocean Cay is a big sandpile on which the Dillingham Corporation will pile more sand that it will subsequently sell on the U.S. mainland. The sand that Dillingham is dredging is a specific form of calcium carbonate called aragonite, which is used primarily in the manufacture of cement and as a soil neutralizer. For the past 5,000 years or so, with the flood of the tide, waters from the deep have moved over the Bahamian shallows, usually warming them in the process so that some of the calcium carbonate in solution precipitated out. As a consequence, today along edges of the Great Bahama Bank there are broad drifts, long bars and curving barchans of pure aragonite. Limestone, the prime source of calcium carbonate, must be quarried, crushed and recrushed, and in some instances refined before it can be utilized. By contrast, the aragonite of the Bahamian shallows is loose and shifty stuff, easily sucked up by a hydraulic dredge from a depth of one or two fathoms. The largest granules in the Bahamian drifts are little more than a millimeter in diameter. Because of its fineness and purity, the Bahamian aragonite can be used, agriculturally or industrially, without much fuss and bother. It is a unique endowment. There are similar aragonite drifts scattered here and there in the warm shallows of the world, but nowhere as abundantly as in the Bahamas. In exchange for royalties, the Dillingham Corporation has exclusive rights in four Bahamian areas totaling 8,235 square miles. In these areas there are about four billion cubic yards—roughly 7.5 billion long tons—of aragonite. At rock-bottom price the whole deposit is worth more than $15 billion. An experienced dredging company like Dillingham should be able to suck up 10 million tons a year, which will net the Bahamian government an annual royalty of about $600,000.
Posted 21 May 2014, 10:18 a.m. Suggest removal
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