Off a near two-year hia­tus, Kel­ly-Ann Bap­tiste is fi­nal­ly set to rep­re­sent T&T once again with her in­clu­sion in­to a near full-strength 23-ath­lete na­tion­al team for the sec­ond edi­tion of the IAAF/BTC World Re­lays, which runs from May 2-3, again in Nas­sau, Ba­hamas.

Bap­tiste is set to run in T&T colours for the first time since her ban by the IAAF for the use of banned sub­stances, which took ef­fect in 2013 and was lift­ed in Jan­u­ary.

The 28 year-old To­ba­go-born na­tion­al 55m (in­door), 100m and 200m record hold­er is ex­pect­ed to fur­ther strength­en an al­ready dy­nam­ic 4x100m line-up, which al­so in­cludes Kai Selvon, Michelle-Lee Ahye, Re­yare Thomas and Ka­maria Du­rant, the same quar­tet that cap­tured bronze in the women's 4x100m in 42.66 sec­onds at the in­au­gur­al edi­tion of the World Re­lays last year.

The women's 4x100m team, is fur­ther boost­ed with depth with the in­clu­sion of Lisa Wick­ham. Al­though it is un­like­ly, giv­en the tight two-day sched­ule, the women's team can still form a 4x200m team from the six-ath­lete pool.

Un­like last year, the women run­ners are ten­ta­tive­ly sched­uled to com­pete in on­ly one oth­er race, the 4x400m and will not pro­vide a 4x800m team. Na­tion­al women's 400m record hold­er Janeil Bellille and hur­dles spe­cial­ist Josanne Lu­cas will join Ra­mona Mod­este, Ale­na Brooks and Mag­no­lia How­ell to com­plete the women's 4x400m team, which will aim for an im­proved show­ing from last year's dis­ap­point­ing 12th place.

Mean­while, the T&T men will fea­ture in three events com­pared to the two races last year.

The pool of ath­letes for the 4x100m and 4x200m re­lays in­cludes the same com­bi­na­tion of Marc Burns, Ke­ston Bled­man, Ron­dell Sor­ril­lo and Richard Thomp­son, who cap­tured the 4x100m sil­ver at last year's event in 38.04 sec­onds, be­hind the Ja­maican star-stud­ded line-up of Nes­ta Carter, Nick­el Ash­meade, Ju­lian Forte and Yohan Blake, who clocked 37.77. The same four T&T 4x100m run­ners have been par­tic­u­lar­ly ac­tive and in good form head­ing in­to the com­pe­ti­tion.

The T&T 4x100m/4x200m pool al­so in­cludes first time en­trants, Mar­cus Dun­can, Em­manuel Cal­len­der and Kyle Greaux. Greaux is al­so list­ed for the T&T 4x400m pool, along with Ja­cob St Clair.

As with the 4x100m team, the 4x400m team in­volves all the start­ing run­ners who broke the na­tion­al record at the World Re­lays last year. Lalonde Gor­don, Ren­ny Quow, Machel Ce­de­nio and Jar­rin Solomon cap­tured bronze for T&T in that race in two min­utes, 58.34 sec­onds, be­hind USA (2:57.25) and Ba­hamas (2:57.59). As ex­pect­ed, T&T will be with­out 2014 Bow­er­man Award win­ner and in­door 400m na­tion­al record hold­er, De­on Lendore, giv­en his col­lege and NCAA com­mit­ments. How­ev­er, the na­tion­al team will like­ly ben­e­fit from Lendore's legs at the World Cham­pi­onships in Au­gust.

The trav­el­ling staff in­cludes Dex­ter Voisin (man­ag­er), Dr Ian Hy­po­lite, Charles Joseph (coach­es) Dr Anyl Gopeesingh, Zephyri­nus Nicholas and Verne Al­leyne (med­ical staff).

At the in­au­gur­al World Re­lays, T&T placed fourth over­all out of 43 par­tic­i­pat­ing na­tions in the medal count, and sixth in the points stand­ings with 19 points, be­hind USA (60), Ja­maica (41), Kenya (35), Great Britain (24) and Aus­tralia (21).

Both the men and women's 4x100m teams, as well as the men's 4x400m re­lay teams qual­i­fied for Au­gust's IAAF World Cham­pi­onships af­ter their per­for­mances at last year's World Re­lays.

This year's event will serve as a qual­i­fy­ing stage for the 2016 Sum­mer Olympics in the 4x100 and 4�400 me­tres re­lays with the top eight placed teams in both seal­ing au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tion.