The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

MANAGING Director Lionel Haven said it has been a whirlwind experience for the Local Organising Committee, but they have finally put it all together for a ‘Bahamazing’ show over the next two days as the International Amateur Athletic Federation’s World Relays Bahamas 2015 takes centre stage at the Thomas A Robinson National Stadium.

Haven, who heads the LOC which has been commissioned by the IAAF for the past two years to run the first two versions of the newly formed global competition, said originally there was some 47 countries confirmed, but the numbers have been reduced to 44 after three countries decided to pull out for various reasons.

“We’re bringing the world to the Bahamas and because we have so many international broadcasting stations and news agencies here, the event will allow us to take the Bahamas to the world with more than 160 countries being able to view the two days of competition live. This will give us an opportunity to showcase our culture, our style and our ambience.”

Haven, a former national team player and executive in the Bahamas Football Association, said everything is in place and they have been working aggressively behind the scenes ensuring that the public will have a first-class event at the stadium this weekend.

“We’re looking forward to the event on Saturday and Sunday and we’re sure that it’s going to be a fantastic event,” he said. “Last year, it was all relatively new to us, so we kind of went in somewhat apprehensively, but this year we are going in with a little more confidence.

“We’ve had a major change from last year where we had about four small hotels that we used for the Games Village. This year we have the one hotel at Atlantis, so we are trying to accommodate everybody and so far it’s going out quite perfectly because everbody seems to be enjoying themselves.”

Although the LOC has been faced with some challenges in pulling the event off this year, Haven said they have dealt with all of the adversities as they came up and now he’s looking forward to watching it all unfold.

“There are a few changes that we will also be introducing this year, but I’m sworn to secrecy,” he said. “We have some new innovations that we will be introducing this year. We did some new things last year when the athletes made their entrance into the stadium and there are some intentions to do one or two more things differently to hype the excitement and make things run a lot smoother.”

Haven said it’s something that patrons will have to be in the stadium to experience.