jun.25.2008
The Trinidad and Tobago Darts Association, in collaboration with the Ministry of Sport and Youth Affairs, will host of the 17th Caribbean Darts Championships and the 4th Americas Cup from July 25th to August 3rd , 2008. This was officially announced at a Media Launch at the Cascadia Hotel recently, the proposed venue for these events.
The Americas Cup will be the first event and will run from July 25th - 27th with the main sponsor being Superl Travel Service Limited. This will involve 12 competing teams and will feature world- ranked players from Canada and U.S.A. While this tournament is usually dominated by these two teams, our team has had notable success in the last three events by placing third and winning the Ladies’ Singles Title in 2004 with Nannette Brooks.
The major event is, of course, the Caribbean Championships which will feature the top Caribbean teams, as well as teams from Florida and Brazil. These include Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Brazil, Cayman Islands, Florida, Guyana, Jamaica, Puerto Rico and St. Lucia. These teams are coming to “settle their own score” with Trinidad and Tobago as we are the present Caribbean Team Champions, being unbeaten in Barbados in 2006 at the last Championships.
Each Caribbean team will comprise of 8 male and 5 female players, together with a manager and coach. T&T hopefully, will use the experience gained from participating in the World Cup Darts which was held last year in Holland. Our Men’s team includes Vivekanand Dyal (captain), Kevin Jacob, Rahaman Hassanali, Troy Bhujawan, Anthony Guevarra, Felix Le Blanc, Duke Cole, Ian De Silva and Lester Legall (reserve). The women are Nannette Brooks, Ann- Marie James, Charmaine Harrington, Debbie Blanc, Abi- Gail Jacob with Jo- Ann Christopher as reserve.
These tournaments will be an important marker on the sports calendar as it is not often that any sport is given the opportunity to host such a major event featuring 13 foreign teams with over 200 participants for a period of 10 days. While the sport of Darts may not enjoy the popularity of football and cricket, the rivalry among the Caribbean countries competing in Darts is just as competitive and exciting and the T.T.D.A. invites everyone to come out and support the home team as we seek to make T&T proud.
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