Curtis Eustace, Savitri Holassie top prelims

SASHA HARRINANAN

CURTIS Eustace and Savitri Holassie are top of the standings after the preliminary round of the Senior King and Queen of Carnival competition.

Only the top ten king and queen costumes move on to the finals during Dimanche Gras, taking place this Sunday at the Queen’s Park Savannah, Port of Spain.

However Eustace, Holassie and the 18 other finalists had to wait more than 24 hours to find out who made the cut. There were 31 queens and 38 kings in this year’s preliminaries, which began on Tuesday evening and ended at about 1.15 am on Wednesday. The show began with the finals of the Junior King and Queen of Carnival competition. While the the National Carnival Commission (NCC) issued the juniors’ results at 10.44 am on Wednesday, the seniors’ results were not available until 9.24 am yesterday. Asked why such a delay for the seniors, the NCC told Newsday it “strives, in every way, to ensure that there is accuracy in the publication of results emanating from the various competitions.”

There was a tie between Pamela Gordon and Sherise Stewart, with both scoring 382 points and the NCC used its tie-breaker system. Stewart’s tie breaker score was higher than Gordon’s thereby resulting in the 10th and 11th placings respectively.”

The top three queen finalists are Savitri Holassie with 422 points for Salicia, Queen of the Seas, Krystal Thomas with 416 points for De Head Huntress and Gloria Dallsingh with 413 points for Gem of the Ocean.

The top three kings are Curtis Eustace with 418 points for Kamatachi, D Chinese Demon Butterfly, Marlon Rampersad with 415 points for D Midas Touch and Raymond Mark with 402 points for Pllito, King of the Underworld.