The off-again, on-again CARIFTA Games, the region’s annual junior athletics showpiece set to be staged in Bermuda this year, are now officially called off because of the Covid-19 pandemic, organizers have announced.
The governing body, the North American, Central American and Caribbean Athletics Association (NACAC) confirmed this decision last week.
Donna Raynor, president of the Bermuda National Athletics Association, said she was “disappointed” by the cancellation.
Guyana, which stepped aside for the first postponement last year, will host the Games in 2022.
The scheduling of the Games has been beset by problems since the original postponement from April 2020 not long after the outset of the pandemic.
A spike in Covid-19 cases in Bermuda from mid-December into the new year led to the dates around Easter weekend 2021 being scrapped.
Among the factors for the cancellation are the Bermuda government’s mandatory 14-day quarantine policy for unvaccinated travelers at their own expense, accommodation arrangements that “have been well below the required number of rooms for the traditional Carifta Games” and the lack of additional funding available to the local organizing committee.
The Games, first held in 1972, were set to be staged in Bermuda for the fifth time.
