An­dre Bap­tiste

Twen­ty-year-old Je­hue Gor­don brought some sun­light to a dull, cold Moscow morn­ing at the 2013 World Cham­pi­onships, yes­ter­day, win­ning his heat and qual­i­fy­ing for to­day's semi­fi­nals.

Run­ning in the last of five heats in the 400-me­tre hur­dles, Gor­don was made to work hard­er than he would have want­ed, but won in a time of 49.52 to progress to to­day's semi­fi­nal at 11.40 am (TT time).

It was a day that start­ed with promise but end­ed with­out suc­cess for T&T.

Apart from Gor­don, five T&T ath­letes com­pet­ed in var­i­ous semi­fi­nals but failed to progress to the fi­nals while women's 400-me­tre hur­dler, Sparkle McK­night could not ad­vance out of the heats, fin­ish­ing last of eight in her ef­fort.

Mikel Thomas fin­ished fourth in his 110-me­tre hur­dles semi­fi­nal while Wayne Davis was sixth. Thomas was tenth over­all and Davis 11th.

Michelle Lee Ahye was fifth in her 100 me­tres semi­fi­nal in 11.33 which was not good enough to earn a place in the fi­nal which was won by Shelly Ann Fras­er-Pryce of Ja­maica.

Al­so drop­ping out of com­pe­ti­tion in the 400 me­tres were De­on Lendore and Jar­rin Solomon. Lendore was fourth in his semi­fi­nal in 45.47 and 12th over­all while Solomon was al­so fourth in his event in 45.43 and 11th over­all.

An op­ti­mistic Gor­don said he felt good af­ter his first place ef­fort but in­sist­ed his time was not a ma­jor fac­tor. "The time was re­al­ly not sig­nif­i­cant. The idea was to make sure and qual­i­fy for the next round. Gor­don said he used up as lit­tle en­er­gy as pos­si­ble. "The semi­fi­nals re­al­ly takes a lot out of you, so it is just to go home and re­cov­er as much as pos­si­ble be­fore to­mor­row. I am hap­py with win­ning. To­day was a bit cold­er than most days, but we had the full works and I am pre­pared," Gor­don re­vealed.

He de­scribed his race as "per­fect­ly ex­e­cut­ed."

"It was de­ter­mined by how these guys in lane six and lane sev­en went out. It took me out of my game plan a lit­tle, be­cause I want­ed to go up un­til the eighth hur­dle with 13 steps. I went about sixth to the sixth hur­dle. These guys just did some­thing crazy and in the end, I just fo­cussed on my lane," added Gor­don.

Ques­tioned on any com­par­isons with the Lon­don Olympics where he reached the fi­nal, Gor­don said: "I have come here with a lot more ex­pe­ri­ence. I was a lot calmer com­ing in­to the heats...al­though the pres­sure was build­ing up in the call room as every­body was pac­ing around. This is my third World Cham­pi­onships and I came in a lot more set­tled. The med­ical team is giv­ing me full sup­port and the man­ag­er is mak­ing cer­tain we have every­thing we need."

McK­night was dis­ap­point­ed with her ef­fort say­ing it was not her best race.

She said: "It was my first time com­pet­ing at this lev­el and I had a very long sea­son and was just hap­py to be here and to com­pete."

Davis said he fo­cused on the wrong lane.

He said: "My body was out of po­si­tion from the first hur­dle. I lost the race from the first hur­dle. This is the first time I have raced against this qual­i­ty of field and some­times it just takes a lit­tle get­ting to be able to run with these guys."

Lee Ahye told the T&T Guardian she was not hap­py with her start but ran her heart out to the end. "Once I fix my start, I will be hard to beat in years to come."

Lee Ahye has al­ready turned her at­ten­tion to the re­lays and in the ab­sence of both Kel­ly Ann Bap­tiste and Se­moy Hack­ett, she un­der­stands her role. "

"My fo­cus is the 4x100 me­tres on Sat­ur­day. All eyes will be on me to run the an­chor leg, our aim is to reach the fi­nal and then go af­ter it."

Lendore said he went in­to his race with lots of con­fi­dence but, mid­way through, he did not have any re­serves in the tank. "I just tried my best to come home but I am not one to look back. I am look­ing to pre­pare for the 4x400 in a cou­ple of days. I love re­lays so I will be ready to run the 4x400."

Solomon said he went out hard but he may have been in­tim­i­dat­ed by the pres­ence of Olympic cham­pi­on Ki­rani James and the Olympic sil­ver medal­list. "I tied up a lit­tle bit com­ing home, that is what caused me to fin­ish fourth, but over­all it just was not my day," he said.

"I look at the pos­i­tives, I was able to come back and run a de­cent time af­ter run­ning a per­son­al best, and I came fourth in a race with some re­al­ly good peo­ple."

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