San Juan PUR - Over 100 delegates from 14 countries will meet this weekend in Carolina for the 16th Congress of the North America, Central America and Caribbean Track & Field Coaches Association (NACACTFCA).

The event opened Friday with the attendance of IAAF vice-president and NACAC president Amadeo Francis, Jamaica’s IAAF Area Representative Neville McCook, Puerto Rico´s Minister of Sports David Bernier and National Olympic Committee chairman Héctor Cardona.

José Aponte de la Torre, the Mayor of Carolina, which plays host to the Congress, welcomed participants at the Courtyard Marriott Hotel, located in the beautiful Isla Verde beach.

Puerto Rico´s Víctor López, chairman of NACACTFCA and the IAAF Coaches Commission, recalled that NACACTFCA was the second area coaches association created, after the European, in July 1989, during the Central American and Caribbean Senior Athletic Championships in San Juan.

The list of top lecturers includes Germany’s Dr. Gunter Tidow, regarded worldwide as a specialist on strength training, biomechanics and technical analysis events.

Tidow is currently Head of the Faculty of Human Movement and Sport at the Humboldt University in Berlin.

Other specialists are Ramona Pagel (throws), David Butler (Pole Vault) and Tom Tellez (sprints) of the USA, as well as Canada’s Wynn Gmitroski (distance events) and Cuba’s Ricardo Guadarrama (Horizontal Jumps).

Delegates come from the USA, Mexico, Canada, Bahamas, Jamaica, Barbados, the Cayman Islands, the US Virgen Islands, Aruba, Curacao, Bonaire, Puerto Rico, Sweden and Germany.

For more details, please go www.nacactfca.org.