Ja confirms camp base for World Championships
BY KAYON RAYNOR Senior staff reporter raynork@jamaicaobserver.com
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
THE Jamaica Amateur Athletics Association (JAAA) has selected the town of Herzog Onara in the city of Nuremberg as the site where the nation’s elite athletes will reside for its customary training camp ahead of the 12th IAAF World Championships in Berlin from August 15 to 23.
ARIS… we have definitely confirmed (that) the camp will be held in Herzog Park Hotel
President of the JAAA’s Howard Aris yesterday told the Observer that his executive recently decided to set up their one-week pre-games camp in Nuremberg from August 6 to 11, instead of Berlin.
“We have definitely confirmed (that) the camp will be held in Herzog Park Hotel,” Aris disclosed, noting that Herzog Onara is a town in the German City of Nuremberg.
“It has two all-weather training tracks. One is literally across the street and it’s where the team stayed in 2004 prior to going to Athens (for the Olympics), so that is confirmed and the camp will start on the sixth of August and the athletes will leave to go into the Berlin on the 11th,” the JAAA boss explained.
On May 22, Aris had told the Observer that his executive were down to Nuremberg and Berlin having ruled out London because of poor weather conditions, as well as Italy and Spain because they were too far away from Berlin.
This summer’s pre-world championship camp will be one-week shorter than last year’s pre-Olympic Games camp in Tianjin, which was marred by controversy after athletes affiliated with the MVP Track and Field Club complained of the time in which they had to report.
Aris, who indicated that top coaches including Glen Mills and Stephen Francis were consulted during the selections process, believes that things will go much smoother this summer as most of the athletes will be based in Europe in the lead up to the 12th IAAF Championships in Berlin.
“They (athletes) are due in on the sixth (of August). They will be notified the moment the team has been selected and we’ll make an announcement,” the veteran administrator said.
Aris outlined that all athletes competing in this weekend’s Supreme Ventures National Senior Championships (June 26 to 28) will know about the date and venue of the training camp.
“We are in the final stages now of collating the total costs and so on, but we’re looking a sponsor for that, which we’re also working on,” Aris added.