When Olympic gold medallist Rai Benjamin steps onto the track at YASCO, it does something a stopwatch cannot measure. The surface is the same, the heat still sits on your shoulders, and the lanes still curve into possibility, but the air changes. For Antigua and Barbuda’s young athletes, Benjamin’s Christmas break return with his Hayestack training group was not just a clinic. It was a glimpse of what “world-class” looks like up close, in real time, without a TV screen buffering the dream.

Held on December 29, 2025, at the YASCO Sports Complex, the one-day camp drew close to 100 budding athletes and nearly 20 coaches, making it one of the most concentrated athlete-development moments on the local calendar. And crucially, it was not a photo-op masquerading as sport. It was instruction, repetition, correction, and encouragement from people who make a living in the margins of elite performance.

From “Watch Me” to “Try This”

The sessions were akin to a real high-performance environment: athletes began with a meet-and-greet and warm-up, then rotated through circuits that touched the building blocks of speed and technique: plyometrics, block starts, long jump drills, hurdle work, relay exchanges….. The kind of fundamentals that, done properly, become a young athlete’s quiet advantage months later at Inter-Schools, CARIFTA trials, or National Championships.  

The significance is simple: Antigua has talent, but talent without exposure can become talent without direction. Camps like this pull young athletes out of “guess-and-run” mode and into learning how to train, how to listen to their bodies, how to execute under guidance, and how to treat sport as craft.

Frank Talk on Real Challenges

Benjamin used the moment to speak plainly about what local athletics needs to level up: infrastructure that matches ambition.

“I would love to see a stadium out here at some point… it would be nice to have a facility out here that’s up to par with what the rest of the Caribbean countries have,” he said, pointing to the way improved amenities can lift both athletes and coaches. “It not only drives motivation with the younger athletes, but it drives the coaches to be better… [and] the country would rise in the athletic standings in the world.” 

That’s not idle commentary. It is an elite athlete describing the ecosystem effect: better space leads to better training habits; better habits produce better performance; better performance fuels participation and national belief.

Why This Hit Young Athletes Differently

In speaking to the media, Benjamin’s presence carries extra weight because it reads as both global and personal. In Antigua Observer’s coverage, he reflected on how formative his early years on the island were to his interest in track and why returning to share knowledge matters. “Having the ability to come and give back… is super important to me,” he said.  

For a youth athlete, that lands in a very particular place: if someone who has been to the very top still remembers their early track days, then those early track days were not small. They are a beginning.

Benjamin also stressed that the camp wasn’t about numbers, but about athletes leaving “more informed than when they arrived,” and learning what a professional programme feels like, on the track and in daily life.  That “daily life” line matters. Discipline is portable. So is confidence.

A Rare Coaching Classroom

This was also a coaches’ clinic in disguise, with Olympic champion and renowned coach Joanna Hayes leading the group, and local standouts such as Cejhae Greene and Joella Lloyd involved in delivery.  

For Antigua’s coaching community, the value is not simply hearing what elite athletes do, but seeing how elite systems teach: the cues, the corrections, the sequencing, the standards. That knowledge does not evaporate when the visitors fly out. If applied consistently, it becomes institutional memory inside the local athletics community.

Antigua and Barbuda Athletics Association President Shorna Joseph called the experience “great” for the country, highlighting the impact of Olympians engaging directly with young athletes and the personal nature of Benjamin’s mentoring while on island. 

The Motivation Multiplier

At the end of the clinic, participants received athletic gear provided by the Olympians. It’s a nice touch, yes, but it’s also something deeper: a symbolic transfer from “I met them” to “I was invested in.” For many young athletes, that small bag of gear becomes a physical reminder that they were seen.  

And it’s hard to overstate the impact of “being seen” in youth sport.

Bigger Than Sport: Sports Tourism With Substance

The camp also sits neatly inside Antigua and Barbuda’s sports tourism strategy: using elite training visits to promote the destination while building local capacity. Tourism Minister Charles Fernandez described the approach as a way to “inspire our youth, elevate our international profile, and showcase the destination as an ideal environment for elite training.”  

That’s the best version of sports tourism: not just athletes posting beach sunsets, but athletes leaving something behind in the community that hosted them.

What Comes Next

The opportunity now is consistency: periodic camps, stronger local competition structures, and a deliberate push to improve the YASCO environment so that young athletes can practice excellence in a setting that supports it.

Because a single day’s attendance won’t measure the real legacy of Rai Benjamin’s visit. The legacy will show up later, in cleaner hurdle form, in sharper relay exchanges, in athletes who stay in the sport one more year, and in coaches who tweak one drill that changes a season.

That is how sport grows: one spark, then a discipline, then a culture.