Defending champions Calabar High are heavily favoured to retain the ISSA/GraceKennedy Boys’ and Girls’ Athletics Championships and secure their fourth consecutive hold on the Mortimer Geddes Trophy when action starts today at the National Stadium at 2:00 pm.

Calabar High, who will be seeking their 25th title overall, have most to fear from perennial rivals Kingston College (KC) and, to a lesser extent, Jamaica College (JC).

The Michael Clarke-coached boys from Red Hills Road have looked awesome all season and all indications are that they will be very hard to beat.

Last year, they totally annihilated the competition amassing 305 points to win by a whopping 96 points ahead of KC with 208.5 points, with JC third with 190 points.

However, that margin of victory is not expected this year, but the green and black ‘Rabalac’ are expected to be too powerful for the rest of the teams.

Head coach Clarke, who is arguably the most successful coach, is aiming for his sixth title with Calabar and his 14 overall, having guided JC to seven crowns and St Jago High with one.

“We are confident what our preparations have brought us thus far and we are waiting to see what it will bring us,” Clarke told the Jamaica Observer yesterday.

Despite losing the likes of Javon Francis, throwers Basil Bingham, Christopher Brown and Rajay Hamilton, who won both the 800m and 1,500m, Calabar will not be significantly weaker as they have replaced their star athletes with capable athletes.

“Our strength lies right across. We don’t have any specific areas,” noted Clarke, who safely reported that all his athletes are healthy going into the Championships.

Despite their obvious depth, Calabar appear a bit weak in Class Three, but Clarke is not perturbed. “We are waiting to see what happens when the meet starts.”

The respected Champs Preview Magazine has surprisingly predicted that KC will be victorious by two points ahead of Calabar. It has KC garnering 306 points to Calabar’s 304, with JC back in third with 206 and St Jago fourth on 190 points.

“That’s news to me. I wish the writer all the commercial success,” was Clarke’s terse response to the predictions.

Meanwhile, KC, the most successful school with 31 titles, are quietly confident of notching their 32nd lien on the trophy, having last won it in 2009.

Observer sources have revealed that KC are expecting to beat Calabar by six points, but if checks were done at JC, they too would internally tally a winning number of points.

KC’s head coach Neil Harrison, in his first season at the helm of the famed purples, said they are ready and raring to go.

“It will be a tough challenge, but it’s not beyond us and we are quite capable. I am just hoping that the boys will rise to the occasion, and in my mind it will be a close one,” said Harrison, formerly of Munro College.

“This champs is going to count on the optimally rounded effort of the team. If you are going to win this championship, you have to come good in all the different classes and I believe we are quite capable, quite competent in all classes,” he noted.

“Our Class Three is extremely strong, Class One is strong, Class Two is also strong. The problem with Class Two is that we don’t have the depth that we would have wanted to have, but I think we have sufficient material to get the job done,” Harrison added.

Last year KC failed miserably in the field events, but the coach thinks things will be different this time around.

“I understand that we scored just a few points in the field events last year and I am expecting a better showing this time around, and the beauty of the field events this time around, it will be saturated from all different sectors and not necessarily Calabar totally dominating, which could be in our interest,” he pointed out.

Last year, Calabar scored a massive 115 points in Class Three, this year, that won’t be the case. KC seem to have the strongest Class Three aggregation, while Class Two should belong to Calabar. Class One is evenly matched, setting the stage for an epic battle between the top-two schools.

Calabar are reporting that all athletes are fit, while KC will have to do without Nathaniel Bann in Class Two and are reporting that sprinting prodigy Jevaughn Matherson is fully fit.

The battle for third place could be interesting between JC and St Jago, with several schools playing the role of spoilers like St Elizabeth Technical (STETHS), Wolmer’s Boys’, Edwin Allen, Holmwood Technical, Petersfield High, St George’s College and Munro College.

The boys’ javelin open and the Class One boys’ long jump will get things started at 2:00 pm on day one, in which there will be 21 preliminary events that are scheduled to conclude at 7:20 pm with the boys’ 2,000m steeplechase open.

Calabar’s Christopher Taylor set to break Class Two 400m record

Akeem Bloomfield is KC’s top quarter-miler