Aliann Pompey Invitational athletics meet 2023: Guyanese Aliyah Abrams among featured athletes

The fifth-fastest woman in the world this year in the 400m event is Aliyah Abrams. She will headline the acclaimed Aliann Pompey Invitational, set for June 24 at the National Track and Field Centre at Leonora, WCD, Guyana.
“It means a lot, and it’s important to me because I haven’t competed in Guyana in a few years, so I’m excited to be going back and competing in front of family and supporters,” Abrams said when asked about competing at home for the first time since the 2021 National Senior athletics Championships.

“The API brings together elite athletes and performances, while getting to showcase what Guyana has to offer. It also allows track and field fans in the country to witness the sport live and direct. It is important to show the world that we are capable of putting on a high-calibre meet that can attract world-class talent,” Abrams has said.
Abrams is having a sensational season. The former University of South Carolina standout athlete has reset Guyana’s 400m record at the NACAC New Life Invitational in The Bahamas.
With a remarkable time of 50.20s, Abrams broke Pompey’s 14-year-old national record on her way to topping an extraordinary field that included Charokee Young, Roxana Gomez, Stacey-Ann Williams, and Sada Williams, the 2022 Commonwealth Games gold medalist and World Championship Bronze Medalist.
Abrams has said she had a sense of fulfilment when she crossed the line on May 13 to replace Aliann’s 2009 time of 50.71s. She proclaimed, “The record was a longstanding goal of mine, and after years of seeming to get close but not quite there, I didn’t focus on the time, I was just running to compete, so that being the result was impressive.”
Abrams’s time places her in the top five in the world this year, with only Britton Wilson (49.13s), Gabrielle Thomas (49.68s), Rhasidat Adeleke (49.90s) and Stacy-Ann Williams (50.12s) running faster than she has done in the 400m.
Having already qualified for the 2023 World Athletics Championships in Track and Field, Abrams has said that one of her goals this season is to be a finalist at the event, set for August 19 – 27 in Budapest, Hungary, while also clocking a time of less than 50s.
Meanwhile, Aliann Pompey, highlighting her reason for choosing Abrams to join the likes of Kim Collins and Kirani James on the list of athletes to headline her much-celebrated meet, noted, “Aliyah is having a great year. She’s the 5th fastest woman in the world this year, our new 400m national record holder, all this with both World Championships and Olympics on the near horizon”.
According to Pompey, one of the recurring themes of the competition this year is “legacy”.
“When the competition started, the goal was to bring the best of the world here to Guyana to compete against our best athletes. Aliyah has catapulted us, and Guyana’s best is also one of the world’s best.”
Aliann Pompey, Guyana’s Commonwealth Games 400m gold and silver medallist, had seen her fifth edition of the AP Invitational, like most sports events in 2020, cancelled because of COVID-19. The Olympian had made several attempts to host the championships, but, in 2022, was curtailed by several challenges, including the relaying of the track at the country’s lone synthetic facility.
In February 2020, the AP Invitational was announced by World Athletics as part of its structured World Athletics Continental Tour.
World Athletics had stated that the impetus for creating the Continental Tour was to provide more competition and earning opportunities for more athletes.
At the 2018 AP Invitational, Kirani James, the 2012 Olympic Champion and 2016 Olympic silver medalist, clocked 44.99 seconds to win the AP Invitational 400m and set a new track record.
The AP Invitational, which ran off its inaugural event in 2016, has seen 11 athletes, all from overseas, move on to compete at the Olympic Games in Rio.