Daily Archives: April 27, 2017

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

THE goal was to get all four relay teams qualified for the IAAF World Championships over the weekend. But team manager Philippa Willie said they were more surprised that the 4 x 400 teams didnt make it and the 4 x 100m teams did at the IAAF/BTC World Relays at Thomas A Robinson National Stadium on Sunday.

This weekend, the Bahamas Association of Athletic Associations will be sending the two 4 x 400m relay teams to compete in the 123rd Penn Relays Carnival in Philadelphia in the match-up with the USA versus the World in a bid for the men to improve on their current time that is ranked at No.9 and the women, whose time is pegged at No.11.

I will be expecting a little more from our 4 x 4 relay teams, said Willie, who will be travelling along with head coach Fritz Grant, assistant coach Sidney Cartwright and understudy coach Ravanno Ferguson.

Ramon Miller, who didnt compete at the World Relays, will be added to the mens team that will be minus Steven Gardiner, but including Michael Mathieu, Elroy McBride, Andretti Bain and Demetrius Pinder.

Unfortunately, Ramon ran a little too late for us to consider his time for the selection to the World Relays. But we have added him to the team going to Penn, she said. We feel with him on the team, they will do very well.

The mens 4 x 4 team will compete against the USA, Botswana, Guyana and Jamaica. The USA won the A final for the gold medal over silver medallists Botswana, while Jamaica was third as they all booked their tickets to London. The Bahamas was fifth in the B final, but Guyana didnt field a team.

Like Gardiner, Shaunae Miller-Uibo will not be making the trip. The two, along with veteran Chris Fireman Brown, are all sponsored by Adidas and their athletes are committed to competing in the Drake Relays at the same time.

Without Miller-Uibo, the womens team will add Lanece Clarke and VAlonee Robinson, who both didnt compete in the relays. They will join Christine Amertil, Tynia Gaither, Anthonique Strachan and Rashan Brown.

We wont have Shaunae, but based on the team we have selected, I think they will also do very well.

The Bahamas will face the United States, Botswana, Jamaica and Nigeria in the womens 4 x 4 relay. The USA won the gold at the World Relays in the A final with Jamaica third, Botswana sixth and Nigeria seventh, having all qualified for London. The Bahamas placed fourth in their heat, won by Nigeria, but opted not to contest the B final.

The Bahamas has also been invited to participate in the womens sprint medley (two 100m, one 200m and a 400m) and therefore, Willie said they included a couple of sprinters on the team to ensure that the team is well represented.

In the sprint medley, the Bahamas will face two teams from the USA, the British Virgin Islands and Jamica.

The sprint medley was not contested at the World Relays.

Its ironic that the two teams that qualified at the Worlds were not the first times that we expected to qualify, she said. We expected the 4 x 4s to qualify. For the most part, our 4 x 4 have more depth and we are certain that they will both qualify, giving us a chance to run all four teams at the World Championships.

The IAAF World Championships is scheduled for August in London, England and there is a cut of period at the end of June for the final 16 teams to secure their berths.The top eight spots will be occupied from the top eight teams to finish their event.

The team ofDevine Parker, Brianne Bethel, Tylar Carter and Tynia Gaither ran 44.01 for sixth place in the womens 4 x 1, while the mens team ofWarren Fraser, Shavez Hart, Cliff Resias and Adrian Griffith ran 39.18 for third place in the B final.

However, as a result of Canada, France and the Netherlands not finishing in the A final, Trinidad & Tobago, Germany and the Bahamas, the first three finishers in order in the B final, were moved up to complete the top eight qualifying spot.

Willie said there are a number of athletes who are competing on the collegiate scene, who were not given the time of to come home and compete in the relays. So she feels that before the summer, they will accomplish their goal of getting the four teams to London.

I think we are in a pretty good spot, so we will do very well, said Willie of the team heading to Penns on Thursday, compete on Saturday and return home on Sunday. We have a benchmark where they have to work from, so we just have to get it together.

As the manager of the World Relay team, Willie said she was really impressed with the level of commitment that she got from all of the competitors on Team Bahamas.

We had three veterans on the team in Christine (Amertil), Demetrius (Pinder) and Michael (Mathieu), she said. We had a very young team led by Shaunae (Miller) and Steven (Gardiner) and they performed very well.

Once our athletes can stay healthy and we can keep them happy, they will be around for a long time.

Willie noted that it wasnt all rosey in the camp, but they got through their difficulties.

I know there were some athletes who had some issues with the coaches, but I think the athletes have to learn how to compromise. The coaches are there for a reason, Willie pointed out.

They see things that we, as athletes, dont see. The coaches have a job to do and the athletes have a job to do and that is to perform.

As for Miller-Uibo, Willie said there was some concern as to whether or not she would have competed in the 4 x 4 relay, but she said she went out and gave it 100 percent on the first leg.

We got her to run it and she gave it her all, Willie said. Its unfortunate that we didnt have the depth to be able to qualify, but it happened.

All things considered, Willie said she was happy to endorse Miller-Uibo to run with Gardiner, Strachan and Mathieu as the quartet went on to win the historic mixed gender 4 x 400m relay in 3:25.49.

In the process, the team set a world leading time of for the national and championship records in winning the countrys first gold and only medal in the three editions of the championships.

I want to congratulate all of our teams, who competed in the World Relays, especially the men and women 4 x 1 teams, she summed up. We just have to maintain our times and we should have all four teams in London.

Read the original post:

Bahamas Relay Teams Get Set For The Penn Carnival - Bahamas Tribune

Its a tale as old as Instagram. Every April like clockwork, eerily similar photos infiltrate your feed. Its impossible to escape all the 22-year-olds wearing slight variations on a bohemian themeand its about to get even harder.

Theres a new festival aiming to improve upon Coachellas desert carnival with a tropical paradise, and anyone with enough money or big enough Instagram following can attend. Recruiting a bevy of influencers and models to promote it, selling out $1,500 tickets before a lineup was even announced, and promising two weekends worth of hip young things island hopping in the exclusive Bahamian archipelago known as the Exumas, the first annual Fyre Festival has promised to turn the end of April into one long block of Insta-babes having a better time than you.

Well, that's the idea, at least. The actual festival starts Friday.

Fyre Festival is a product of Fyre Media, an entertainment booking startup that that rapper Ja Rule launched with his tech partner Billy McFarland in 2015. As noted above, its closest spiritual forefather in the bloated festival-scape is probably Coachella. But while Coachella is a music festival that turned into a series of brand activations, Fyre Festival is a brand activation that plays at being a festival.

We didn't just want to be a tech company that was a pure enterprise with no consumer awareness, McFarland explained to Vanity Fair on a recent phone call. So a festival was a great way to go and do that and beyond people who are attending. Or rather the event is not an end in and of itself, but a means to an end, intended to inflate the Fyre name.

The country of the Bahamas is equally invested in this grand brand-building experiment. In the months leading up to the first weekend, Bahamian officials coordinated closely with the organizers. Theyve readied the excursions, provided the jet skis for rent, made the yacht marinas available, and tapped the University of Bahamas culinary division to prepare food. The many businesses involved are depending on Fyres ability to deliver.

To announce a festival without name recognition or a finalized lineup, McFarland and Ja Rule personally invited 400 influencers in various sectors. Their only job, besides attending the festival when it came time, was to post an orange square (orange like fire) to Instagram at a certain time on on a certain day in December, announcing Fyre Festival to the public.

The 400 or so that heeded the call include professional surfers, football players, DJ/producers/founders, a short-lived MTV personality and long-term social media personality, and models and models and models and models and models. You almost certainly could have guessed this already, but each have a healthy Instagram followingfive figures minimum.

The announcement itself was preceded by a photo shoot with top-tier models and Jenner-adjacent ingnuesBella Hadid, Emily Ratajkowski, and Hailey Baldwin among themwho then posted just prior to the orange takeover. An announcement that there will be an announcement, if you will.

Its influencer inception: Models with niche name recognition spreading word about a more widespread announcement for a high-end festival that itself spreads the word about Ja Rules startup (model/actress Ratajkowski was the only one who included an ad disclaimer with the FTC-required hashtag.)

Fyre takes the music festival concept to its logical extreme: Take the ten-thousand dollar accommodations of the boomer-focused Desert Trip, but with the youth of Coachella and the exclusivity of a tropical yacht club, in which members are permitted to bring the Instagram-famous as dates. Its one of the biggest events the Bahamas has ever hosted, according to a statement from the countrys Ministry of Tourism, and it has used its guest list to draw crowds in the thousands. But what will become of the island chain known for its privacy and exclusivity once the influencers descend?

Fyres Insta-happening in the middle of December helped sell out general admission tickets before any of the performers were announced, which isnt totally unheard of. Coachella regularly breaks ticket sales records before the music lineup is released. But while Coachella sells out on reputation, Fyre sold plenty on a promise: you could have a sexy time on a beach with a pia colada in hand and, oh, maybe Major Lazer will be there, too (they will).

This was the main draw for Chanel Iman, Victorias Secret Angel and partner in the festivals campaign, as she told Vanity Fair on a recent phone call. She had just returned from Coachella, and would be jetting off to Fyre in a couple of weeks. [Festivals are] what I like to do in my free time when Im not working and just go out and have a good time and listen to good music, she explained. Music festivals are just fun.

Iman was there for the promotional photo shoot in November, joined by Hadid, Ratajkowski, Baldwin, Shanina Shaik, Alessandra Ambrosio, Hannah Ferguson, and more. A millennial who has a Twitter account, but prefers Instagram and dabbles in Snapchat might recognize the women in the photos and videos individually, but seeing them all together on a boat is a little more rare. A large and disparate group of TV personalities, models, and beauty pageant winners, the group was differentbut, essentially, all beautifulenough that various fashion and celebrity publications were intrigued. Ja Rule was pleased enough with an article from the fashion Web site Fashionista that pondered Whats Fyre Festival, and Why Are All the Models in the Bahamas Promoting It? to tweet it. The plan, it seemed, was working.

After wrapping the shoot, Iman said they would retire to a bonfire on the beach, where they listened to the ocean under the stars. Those nights were just magical because the stars were just bright and beautiful. And I came with my model friends and we all just enjoyed each other's company around the fire. Read that, scroll through her vacation photos, and try to resist taking out a mortgage to book a villa.

A brief word on the music part of the festival: The line-up is impressive, if a little scattered. Migos, G.O.O.D. Music, Major Lazer, and Blink 182 are among the 40 total acts, and McFarland plans to announce five or ten more before the first weekend. Ja Rule will be performing the first Friday of both weekends.

Much like Coachella, the acts are somewhat incidental, a part of a larger experience. Obviously we think our line-up now is pretty awesome, but the experience is what we're really packaging here, McFarland said. Thats why Fyre is taking over The Exumas; thats why theyre chartering flights from Miami to the islands for every ticket holder; and that's why the organizers are throwing a literal treasure hunt (more on that later).

Its possible to spend in excess of $104,995, per a spokeswoman, to have the Fyre experience. Yachts can be rented for $60,000 on the low end. V.I.P. tickets are $3,500, but you can knock a grand off that price if you B.Y.O.Yacht (the docking fee at the marina, however, is five grand).

Travelers willing to spend this kind of cash are the kind that the Bahamasand especially a more private part of the Bahamas that gets less foot traffic, like The Exumas very much wants to court. According to Lori Pennington-Gray, a tourism professor at University of Florida and consultant, late April is generally considered a post-spring break, pre-summer break shoulder season, and events like music festivals are a tried-and-true way to jack up demand.

Take Indio Valley. In 2016, the city netted $3.18 million in ticket taxes from both Coachella and its subsequent country sister festival, Stagecoach, according to estimates commissioned by the Palm Springs visitors bureau. The estimated spending in the greater Coachella area was $403 million. The two festivals span April, making a final, giant push in the latter end of the areas peak tourism season.

Can Fyre turn an Exumas destination into a tropical Palm Springs, the way Coachella has brought a patina of desert chic to the classic resort town? Though scale of the festivals are much different (last year, Coachella welcomed an estimated 99,000, while Fyre ticket-holder numbers are much lower in the thousands, per a festival spokeswoman), the two host destinations have some things in common. Theyre both easy enough to get to from New York or Los Angeles; they both had a long history in the tourism industry on which these events are built on top of; and they both cater to high-end visitors even without the festivals added boost.

Exumas does Palm Springs one better, however. Besides the clear blue water and unrelenting sunshine, one of its major natural resources is near-total privacy. David Copperfield, Faith Hill, and Muslim spiritual leader Aga Khan are among the wealthy individuals that own entire islands or multiple islands in the chain. The exclusivity helps set it apart from the neighboring Freeport and Grand Bahamas, which bring to mind family vacations and Carnival cruise drop-off points.

One risk of Fyre Festival is that it would compromise the islands exclusivity. As Dr. Pennington-Gray said, You dont want to have a cookie-cutter approach across all destinations [in the Bahamas], so as things like this grow in popularity, you want to really make it your own and kind of customize it to the island. Even if the festival doubles as a summit of the incredibly wealthy partiers, itll still bring a bulk of tourists to an area that relies on privacy to set it apart from its neighbors. An infusion of the Instagram famous, rather than just the moneyed few that can afford traveling to the destination, certainly widens the pool.

Copperfield, for one, is not too worried. He owns Musha Cay, and the luxury retreat on it. I think its terrific, our own Coachella in The Exumas the magician told Vanity Fair.

I think that [Fyre] is definitely a festival that's special and unique just because it's very private. . . , Iman started to explain, trailing off for just a second to find the right description. And kind of like a luxury-type festival. If one were casting around for an identity of a festival before anyone has yet Fyre-d, luxury-type is just as good a description as any. In addition to the yachts and the fitness classes and catering and massages and the pigs (the same pigs that made a cameo on Ben Higgins Bachelor season), there will be a literal treasure hunt. McFarland and Ja Rule developed intellectual and physical challenges with the help of Spartan Races, and theyll reward an adventurous soul willing to explore the cays by foot and by jet ski with prizes valued at more than $1,000,000 in hidden treasures from luxury jewelry and watches to cash and valuable goods, per the ticketing site. The winner of both weekends will get a piece of land on a private beach on Great Exuma Island.

Dr. Pennington-Gray says the ideal attendee, and one the Bahamas is willing to invest in, is a guest that stays for a while and spends a lot. The 400 influencers are a place to start; they will be at the festival for at least the first weekend. Expect another wave of social media brand awareness in the form of bikinis, frozen drinks, hair, and, maybe, actual bands.

Iman, for one, doesnt quite know what to expect. I know that this is their first time doing this, so Im hoping that everything will go as planned, she said. I like adventure, and this is definitely an adventure for me.

She plans to head out after the first weekend. Or maybe not. I might return for the second weekend. I'll see how the first one is and figure out if for the second weekend I am even available.

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Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photography by Justin Bishop.

Photography by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photography by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Read the original here:

Can a Critical Mass of Victoria's Secret Models and a Hadid Give Bahamas Tourism an Insta-Boost? - Vanity Fair