00:00Some of this country's coaches are frustrated with the state of the stadiums, saying that
00:05it is affecting the athletes from making progress.
00:08One of them is Ganesh Prasad, who is head coach of Simplex Athletic Club.
00:12He says there's plenty of work to be done at the Manny Ram John Stadium.
00:15We have several concerns.
00:17Number one, the stands.
00:20Since 2018, the stands have been closed.
00:24The problem is with the roof.
00:26I want to offer a suggestion that they take off the roof and let us use the stands.
00:32Let us bring our stadium to like my cover wall.
00:35No roof, and we have seating accommodation.
00:39The state of the track, there's only about 40 metres and this track needs some repairs.
00:42If they could, as the contractor is here in Trinidad to repair the Crawford Stadium, we
00:48could ask him to come down here, check on us and repair the track and we should be in
00:53order.
00:54The only concern that he has is the state of the toilets at the south-based venue.
00:59Central-based coach Jason Roach is attached to IG Fastlane Athletics Club.
01:03As such, he would have wanted to make use of the Atterbolden Stadium.
01:07But that has been out of the question for many years.
01:09At present, the surface is very hard, which would maybe cause injury to the athletes.
01:18So we decided not to train at that stadium and basically we train at the Manny Ramjohn
01:24Stadium.
01:26Former athlete Hendricks Ponsett too has his concerns.
01:29Now a coach with Abilene Wildcats, he is worried about the stadium in the eastern part of Trinidad.
01:34The problem in Lycum is accessibility.
01:38The manager, we don't get flexibility, we don't get no corresponding information.
01:44Most of the time, we have limited time to use the stadium, the track needs repair, have
01:51no lighting.
01:52Added to that, he says there is no access to the Larry Gomes Stadium on weekends and
01:58public holidays.
01:59Vinod Narwani, Thiefs Export.
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