An­dre E Bap­tiste

Twen­ty-one-year old Je­hue Gor­don came to the World Cham­pi­onships here in Moscow want­i­ng to have fun.Last night, he not on­ly had fun, but cruised to vic­to­ry in his 400 me­tres hur­dles semi­fi­nal and put him­self in­to to­mor­row's fi­nal with a spendid run in 48.10.It was the sec­ond best qual­i­fy­ing time and the small con­tin­gent of T&T sup­port­ers here are anx­ious­ly await­ing to­mor­row's big fi­nal which will be con­test­ed at 1 pm (T&T time).

Run­ning in lane six, Gor­don got off to a smooth start and took the lead at the top of the straight, be­fore pulling away from Puer­to Ri­can Javier Cul­son, who was sec­ond."The race was a per­fect­ly ex­e­cut­ed one for me. Com­ing over the last hur­dle, I was able to gauge and re­alise that no­body was close, so I just eased through to the line com­fort­ably to re­serve as much in the tank for the fi­nals," added the for­mer Queen's Roy­al Col­lege stu­dent.Gor­don said he was not af­fect­ed by the fall of Ber­shawn Jack­son of the Unit­ed States at the sec­ond hur­dle. "I had my eyes on my lane, hur­dle for hur­dle, and I ex­e­cut­ed one of the best races in my life," he not­ed.Gor­don is the first ath­lete from T&T to reach this year's fi­nals. He does not be­lieve that there is added pres­sure on him be­cause of this. "I don't think so. My coach and I know what we have been work­ing on and I know my team­mates are ful­ly sup­port­ing me.

He said he was pleased with his time and de­scribed it as de­cent."I am re­al­ly sat­is­fied with the time. The day's rest is a good thing for the 400 hur­dles, be­cause we put out so much. I do not think that I ex­ert­ed my­self. I went through the first 300 ag­gres­sive­ly but be­tween the hur­dles I was able to re­lax over the last 100 me­tres," he said.Ques­tioned about the prospect of win­ning a gold medal, Gor­don said he was not think­ing about medals. "I want to have fun. I have been com­ing to these cham­pi­onships and I have al­ways want­ed the gold so bad­ly. It has kept run­ning away from me, so I study­ing to go in the op­po­site di­rec­tion , they say neg­a­tives at­tract, let's see how it works."Gor­don will race from lane six in to­mor­row's fi­nal, with Omar Cis­neros of Cu­ba, who had the fastest time in the se­mi fi­nal of 47.93 in lane five. Olympic Cham­pi­on Fe­lix Sanchez is in lane four and Amer­i­can Michael Tins­ley in lane three while Cul­son will be in lane two.