VETERAN coach Raymond ‘KC’ Graham is furious at members of the Digicel Grand Prix Athletics technical committee after they failed to include any hurdles event as one of the seven disciplines to be contested during the six meet series.

The Digicel Grand Prix was launched on Wednesday with a whopping $16 million worth of cash and prizes to be won.

It is set to begin on February 6, and will see schools contest the 100m, 200m, 400m, 800m, discus, high jump and long jump.

“I am very disappointed that members of the technical committee did not include any of the hurdles events, sprint or intermediate among the grand prix events,” said Graham.

The seven-member technical committee is headed by Maurice Wilson and includes Orette Wallace (central region); Stephen Smith (western region); Oliver Harris (analyst and statistician), plus Cynthia Cooke, Greg Scott and Raffic Shaw (Corporate Area region).

Efforts to contact Wilson proved futile yesterday as calls made to his cell phone went unanswered.

“How can you not do that when outside of sprints the hurdles has been our most successful event at the world level at junior and senior,” argued Graham, who has won four girls’ championship titles with St Jago between 1996-1999.

“I am not fighting against middle distance or jumps, but outside of James Beckford and Germaine Mason, name me any other medallist at the international level for Jamaica in these events” he challenged.

“Also the 800 metres, name me a finalist. How can they do this when at the last major international meets, the country has produced four hurdle medallists. Tyler Mason in the 110 hurdles and Jaheel Hyde in the 400m hurdles at the last World Junior Championships and recently at the World Seniors, Hansle Parchment and Danielle Williams in Beijing,” Graham pointed out.

He continued: “I can understand that this was not done in the first year, but for the second year, this should have been done. Look on our history on the hurdles — the likes of Gillian Russell, Shermaine Williams, Natasha Ruddock, Yanique Thomson, Janieve Russell, Keiron Stewart among the juniors. Michelle Freeman, Brigitte Foster Hylton, Delloreen Ennis London, Danny McFarlane, Winthrop Graham among the seniors.”

Graham, who has transformed then mainly academic institution Mico University College into a sporting powerhouse as director of sports, had a few suggestions.

“What they should have done was to take out the 200 metres and include one of the hurdles. This is not encouraging for our young hurdlers and an event like this which Jamaica has great success in should be encouraged. They had enough time to make the adjustment,” he added.

At the high school level, Graham has worked with Rivoli Campbell and Andrea Lloyd at Camperdown, while Peta-Gaye Dowdie, Delloreen Ennis-London, Kerron Stewart, Melaine Walker, Koreen Hinds, Michelle Burger, Kenia Sinclair, Andrea Bliss and Jovanne Jarrett were among his best at St Jago.