Arcadia Hosts Trinidad and Kyrgyz Republic Special Olympics teams

Arcadia Host Town committee chairman Bruce McCallum (seated at end of table) and several other committee members recently met in Arcadia with the Trinidad-Tobago Head of Delegation Candy Berman-Harper and Trinidad policeman and fireman Ferdinand Bibby (seated second and third from right, respectively).

100 athletes to train, be entertained July 21-24 before World Games begin

One hundred Special Olympics World Games athletes, coaches and mentors from the Caribbean dual-island country of Trinidad & Tobago as well as the Kyrgyz Republic (Kyrgyzstan) will experience the best that Arcadia has to offer for three days and nights in July, including everything from visits to the horse race track, police station and mall to one of the City’s weekly outdoor concerts featuring Caribbean music.
The City of Arcadia, including organizations, businesses, and schools, will provide hotel rooms, meals, training facilities, entertainment, transportation, and mostly a warm welcome to 87 guests from Trinidad & Tobago who range in age from 11 to 52, and about a dozen from Kyrgyz Republic. They will use the days and nights to acclimate to the time zone and stay in shape for competition against 7,000 athletes from 177 countries in the world’s largest sports and humanitarian event anywhere in the world in 2015 that runs from July 25 – Aug. 2 (www.LA2015.org). Opening Ceremonies take place at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and will be televised on ESPN.

The Arcadia Unified School District will provide its facilities for a couple hours of workouts July 22-23, with In-N-Out providing hamburger and cheeseburger lunches from a truck at the high school on July 23for the visitors and other Special Olympics athletes from San Gabriel Valley.
George Fasching’s Car Wash and the Arcadia Rotary Club are providing an old-fashioned outdoor American cookout lunch of hot dogs, baked beans, potato salad, chips and apple pie for visitors on July 22while they enjoy Wilderness Park.

The group will spend time at Westfield Santa Anita mall and tour the neighboring Santa Anita Park horse race track as well as the police station. The delegation will also join nearly 1,000 Arcadians who attend the City’s free summer concerts on the lawn of City Hall the evening of Thursday, July 23, which will coincidentally feature a Caribbean band which has agreed to play the national anthems of the visiting countries. A buffet dinner will be provided at the concert by the Arcadia Chinese Association.

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