EDITOR’S NOTE: At the beginning of April, #EduCaribbean featured sports in Caribbean education in our edition 2021-04-08. This newsletter does the same, but focuses on a single event: the 2021 ISSA/GraceKennedy Boys and Girls’ Athletics Championships (#Champs) to be staged on May 11 – 15, having been cancelled last year at the onset of the pandemic.
Our headline, taken from the Jamaica Gleaner, reads: “TVJ Takes Champs Return To The World”. Champs will be without its usual crowd this year due to COVID-19 restrictions, but the five-day event will be streamed live as pay-per-view showings on the 1spotmedia platform of Television Jamaica (TVJ).
The organisers of Champs — Inter-Secondary Schools Association (ISSA) — have established a number of strict safety protocols, including mandatory COVID-19 testing, in an effort to make the event as safe as possible, in the midst of the pandemic, But, there are still fears that there may be injury to athletes.