Sean Nero

World Ath­let­ics Cham­pi­onship 400-me­tre hur­dles vic­tor Je­hue Gor­don is ex­press­ing con­fi­dence that he can re­peat his win­ning per­for­mance wit­nessed two years ago in Moscow Rus­sia.

Back in 2013 Gor­don won gold in the men's 400 m hur­dles in 47.69 to up­set race favourite Michael Tins­ley of the Unit­ed States who ran 47.70. The 2015 edi­tion of the meet host­ed by the IAAF was sched­uled to take place from Au­gust 22-30 in Bei­jing, Chi­na, at which Gor­don in­tend­ed to de­fend his ti­tle.

"You saw how I ran, so I guess you will see it again. They (peo­ple of T&T) know that I al­ways give it my best. So it's al­ways about T&T at the end of the day: win, lose or draw. My main aim is to get back as fit and as healthy as pos­si­ble and def­i­nite­ly give it my best shot at the World Cham­pi­onships," he said.

Gor­don�who was forced to pull out of the Pan Amer­i­can Games held in Toron­to, Cana­da, a mere two weeks ago, when his train­ing camp dis­cov­ered an in­jury that could have wors­ened had he com­pet­ed at the tour­na­ment�said train­ing was good and the team was work­ing and look­ing ahead to Bei­jing.

"Right now we are work­ing on it. We are work­ing to­geth­er as a team. Noth­ing is ever guar­an­teed. Sport is very iffy. Any­thing could hap­pen on the day. No­body's name is writ­ten on the medals as yet. Once I go out and give it my best per­for­mance!

Even as he kept his eyes on the prize, his pur­suit of high­er ed­u­ca­tion had not waned. Come Sep­tem­ber, Gor­don would grad­u­ate from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies with first class ho­n­ours in sports man­age­ment. Things have been a lot dif­fer­ent since that vic­to­ry, he said, in terms of the life shap­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties that came be­fore him. But he kept his feet firm­ly on the ground, con­scious there was a time and place for every­thing.

Gor­don turned his at­ten­tion to the work of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) and laud­ed its pres­i­dent Bri­an Lewis who through es­tab­lished an Ath­lete Wel­fare Fund and was to ral­ly­ing cor­po­rate T&T and the pub­lic at large to pledge fi­nan­cial sup­port for the 10 or more goal medal by 2024.

"We see what sport does for a na­tion, es­pe­cial­ly with peo­ple like Njisane Phillip, George Bovell, Keshorn Wal­cott and Cleopa­tra Borel. We have a good crop of ath­letes com­ing up es­pe­cial­ly the young Machel Ce­de­nio. It's not to say that the fu­ture is dull for T&T, it's just that we need to sup­port our ath­letes more and show them the re­spect that they de­serve, be­cause at the end of the day, we make a lot of sac­ri­fices to make sure that's T&T is on the map. And, if we don't do that, who is go­ing to? he asked.

Gor­don lament­ed the fact that ba­sic ameni­ties for elite ath­lete train­ing were still not avail­able in T&T, no be­cause a lack of re­sources, but the poor mind sets. Many, he said, still haven't grasped the con­cept of pro­fes­sion­al­ism when meet­ing the needs of the na­tion's ath­letes.

"When we go out­side, we see what it takes and what it means to be a pro­fes­sion­al. In T&T, we are ac­cus­tomed to this lack-lus­tre cul­ture where it's al­ways a short term goal or short term think­ing. We re­al­ly don't think out­side the box as T&T na­tion­als when it comes to stuff like that. We on­ly see the end re­sult. If they can come and live in the ath­letes shoes for a cer­tain point in time, they would see the dif­fi­cul­ties that we are faced with," he said.