An­dre Bap­tise

Four-time Olympic medal­list and for­mer 200m World Cham­pi­on Ato Boldon be­lieves T&T's Women's 4x100m team can win a medal at the World Cham­pi­onships in Bei­jing.

Speak­ing to the Trinidad Guardian this week, the 41-year-old said: "We do have the foot speed. We put three women in­to the semi­fi­nals, and Se­moy ran a sea­son best with 11.13 and it means in the heats, even with Khal­i­fa an­chor­ing, our slow­est woman is 11.19.

"Based on what I have seen in prac­tice, the name of the game is get the stick around safe­ly, let every­body else make the mis­takes. I see this team very sim­i­lar­ly to how I was with the 2001 team that got sil­ver at the 2001 World Cham­pi­onships. You just have to fo­cus on what you can con­trol, get the stick around, we have the foot speed, but foot speed is not what wins the medals. It is go­ing out there and think­ing and be­ing smart and get­ting that stick safe­ly around.

"I be­lieve this team is ca­pa­ble of mount­ing that podi­um. We will be back to work this week. They will prob­a­bly get a rest, but re­sume work­ing on the hand­offs," stat­ed Boldon.

The like­ly or­der for the team will see Kel­ly-Ann Bap­tiste lead­ing off, fol­lowed by Michelle-Lee Ahye and Re­yare Thomas, with Khal­i­fa St Fort run­ning the fourth leg if Se­moy Hack­ett is rest­ed for the heats be­cause of her com­mit­ment to the Women's 200m.

Boldon, who coach­es St Fort, says he would not run the 17-year-old in the fi­nals on Sat­ur­day.

"While I am bi­ased, even with my bias, Khal­i­fa is young and in­ex­pe­ri­enced at this lev­el. We have four very ex­pe­ri­enced women and I would nev­er put my wants over the needs of the coun­try. Khal­i­fa, I feel, can do a good job in the heats, but then let her sit in the stands and watch our ex­pe­ri­enced run­ners pro­pel us to a medal."

Re­gard­ing T&T's with­draw­al from the Men's 4x100m re­lay, fol­low­ing in­juries to three of its six sprint­ers, Boldon said: "We have in­juries, but this is a World Cham­pi­onships so every­body has an ex­cuse. The bot­tom line is our ath­letes have to re­alise that if your prepa­ra­tion is not metic­u­lous down to the very last de­tail, it is not go­ing to work at this lev­el.. This is pro­fes­sion­al track and field."

Ex­pand­ing on the is­sue, he stat­ed: "What I mean is that you have to have your sea­son planned al­most to the week, the minute, to the hour. The peo­ple who are on that podi­um tonight, for in­stance Shelly-Ann Fras­er-Pryce, they sit down in the off sea­son and plan every meet she is go­ing to run."

Boldon al­so ad­dressed the re­cent con­tro­ver­sial com­ments made by Ke­ston Bled­man.

"I am see­ing stuff in the pa­pers. 'I want­ed to go to this meet, I didn't want to go but the Fed­er­a­tion made me go'. That kind of stuff throws off a sea­son and in the case of Ke­ston, we saw that he was sent to a meet he did not want to go to and he be­lieves, right or wrong, that this caused his in­jury... We need to have a bet­ter re­la­tion­ship be­tween the Fed­er­a­tion and the ath­letes, where every­body is on the same page," he de­clared.

Boldon added that he was en­joy­ing his mo­ment as part of the T&T coach­ing team in Bei­jing.

"I have been here since the 15th, and all cred­it to Doc [Ian] Hy­po­lite, who is the head coach but he has kind of al­lowed me to get in­volved in the women's re­lay. He is su­per­vis­ing, but giv­ing me room to op­er­ate... It has been re­ward­ing to me.

"It is nice to be able to work with Kel­ly-Ann, Michelle, Se­moy, Rhea, Kami­ra and of course, Khal­i­fa, and I be­lieve we are now be­gin­ning to have the sort of core the men have had over the last decade and a half and for me that is very re­ward­ing as the re­lay has al­ways been very close to my heart."