Guyanese badminton players Jonathan Mangra and Priyanna Ramdhani recently participated in and completed a one month training camp for players within the Central America and Caribbean region.
Organised by Pan Am Sports and the Badminton Pan American Confederation, the March 20 to April 22 camp was hosted in Guatemala.
More than 20 athletes from Guyana, Mexico, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Cuba, Barbados, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Venezuela and host Guatemala participated in the arduous training run by an experienced coach.
Days before the camp, the Pan Am Sports General Secretary, Ivar Sisniega, stressed that “we seek the benefit of athletes, especially those who come from small countries and who often have difficulties to improve.”
“We believe that this camp will help the athletes to improve their level to compete in the next Central American and Caribbean Games, or the South American Games, and thanks to their effort they can achieve a classification and have a good performance in the Pan American Games Lima 2019.”
President of the Guyana Badminton Association and national coach, Gokarn Ramdhani, in an invited comment said, “I am very happy that our players had a chance to attend this camp, which will surely help them in their future participation in the upcoming tournaments we will have to attend. This also shows the level of the Guyanese players as Pan Am Badminton only selects the players they think will develop to great heights. The Guyana Badminton Association would like to thank the Guyana Olympic Association for endorsing our participation.”