No Women Relays

With 37 days left for the Saipan Pacific Mini Games, Team Fiji athletics are still sorting themselves.

For the first time there will be no women’s 4x100mteres and 4x400metres relay teams taking part.

The games will take place from June 17-25 in the Northern Marianas.

National coach Albert Miller yesterday confirmed of the 10 athletes representing Fiji three are women athletes.

They need four to make the number of runners for a relay set.

The seven male athletes can form two relay teams for 4 by 100 metres and 4 by 400 m relays.

The three women are US-based Fane Sauvakacolo, Shawntell Lockington and Braelynn Yee.

Yee who was listed in the non-travelling reserves list with former blue ribbon champ Younis Bese had appealed for her inclusion.

“Braelynn had challenged not being part of the team and was successful,” Miller said.

“When I had made a suggestion to include another one or two women so that we can have 4x1 and 4x4, it wasn’t accepted,” he said.

“We could have used her (Bese) even though she was involved in rugby. Then one of the clauses in our selection criteria, if you are actively involved in another sport then you can’t qualify.”

While Sauvakacolo is training in the US, Yeshnil Karan is in Australia doing the same.

“Right now the challenge we are facing is trying to get everybody in, to finalize the athletes who has gone through FASANOC.

“Our concern are the ones who are in the West, hopefully this weekend at least everybody would be training together and the next month try and gauge where they are at.

“We’ve had to do a lot of running around – that has been a challenge for us,” he added.

The seven men athletes are Banuve Tabakaucoro, Samuela Railoa, Tony Lemeki, Lasarusa Senibale, Yeshnil Karan, Amania Veisa and Avikash Lal.

Senibale and Lemeki are the new inclusions for the 4x100metres relay while Jone Tikoisuva has been dropped.

“We had included another athlete in the 400metres so he can be part of the 4x4.”

Former national rep,coach and athletics administrator Joe Rodan has voiced his concern saying: “The performance of our athletes are not up to standard, in the past athletics always have the biggest number and always collected the most medals.

“We used to set qualifying times and distances for gold medal prospects. It is unfortunate those standards have dropped.”

The three Athletics Fiji official travelling to Saipan are Miller, Jone Delai (coach) and Litia Senibulu (manageress).