Rachael Thomp­son-King

Beau­ti­ful bronze came T&T's way again yes­ter­day in the men's 4x400 me­tres fi­nal of the 2012 Olympic Games when the quar­tet of Lalonde Gor­don, Jar­rin Solomon, Ade Al­leyne-Forte and De­on Lendore for the sec­ond straight night broke the na­tion­al record for the event.

In the fea­ture race of the evening, T&T crossed the line in 2:59.40, to place third be­hind the Ba­hamas, which stopped the clock at 2:56.40 and al­so set a new na­tion­al record, to claim gold af­ter over­tak­ing USA in the home straight. The Amer­i­cans got the sil­ver in their sea­son's best 2:57.05. Gor­don, who is mak­ing his de­but at the games, is so far, the most cel­e­brat­ed lo­cal ath­lete at the 30th Olympiad, cop­ping his sec­ond bronze medal. He was third in the men's 400m fi­nal on Mon­day.

The To­bag­on­ian, al­ways short with words said, "I feel good. Thank God. I just want to say thanks for the sup­port from T&T. I'm just glad to make the coun­try proud and make the flag fly high again." Gor­don ran the first lap and just like in the semi­fi­nals, he gave T&T a good start, stay­ing among the lead­ers who com­prised Ba­hami­an Chris Brown and USA's Bryshon Nel­lum, be­fore hand­ing off to Solomon.

Solomon com­plet­ed an im­pres­sive sec­ond leg again and was right in the mix with the Joshua Mance (USA) and Demetrius Pin­der (Ba­hamas). By the third lap, Al­leyne-Forte had pushed T&T to third as Amer­i­can Tony Mc­Quay and Michael Math­ieu (Ba­hamas) be­gan pulling away, to make it a two-coun­try race. In the fi­nal lap, USA, through An­ge­lo Tay­lor, was clear­ly ahead with Ra­mon Miller gain­ing with every step. Lendore, mean­while, kept T&T a dis­tant third.

Head­ing down the straight, Miller caught up with Tay­lor, who de­spite his best ef­fort was passed some ten me­tres from the line with the Ba­hami­an go­ing on to give his coun­try its first gold of the Lon­don games. Lendore did just enough to hold off Great Britain's Mar­tyn Rooney, who sprint­ed the fi­nal 30 me­tres but in vain. The Britons placed fourth in a sea­son's best 2.59.55.

"The feel­ing haven't kicked in 100 per cent yet but right now watch­ing how every­thing turned out, just mak­ing the vic­to­ry lap and hear­ing every­body cheer­ing for us, it was a very ex­cel­lent feel­ing," said Lendore af­ter the ex­cep­tion­al per­for­mance. "It even made me want to cry just know­ing we came out here as a team and did the best that we could and it just got us a bronze medal at the Olympics." Sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments were shared by his team­mates Solomon and Al­leyne-Forte.

Solomon said: "This is the best feel­ing in the world right now. I prayed hard over the last two days. We just went out there and did our best and the best was the na­tion­al record and a bronze medal so we can't ask for much more than that." Al­leyne-Forte ex­pressed some re­lief in im­prov­ing from his pre­vi­ous per­for­mance in the semi­fi­nals.

"I told you I was go­ing to get bet­ter. And I proved it. It was rough yes­ter­day (Thurs­day) com­ing off not com­pet­ing in a while, but com­ing out tonight, we got to­geth­er and did all the nec­es­sary things and ex­e­cut­ed," said Al­leyne-Forte.