Nicholas Clarke

Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Ath­let­ics As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T Ephraim Ser­rette has praised the per­for­mances of the na­tion­al squad af­ter it re­turned with ten medals from the NACAC Se­nior Cham­pi­onships in Cos­ta Ri­ca.

The team won two gold medals, three sil­ver and five bronze and is look­ing in sol­id form ahead of the IAAF World Cham­pi­onships in Bei­jing from Au­gust 22-30.

Ser­rette said it was a con­vinc­ing fol­low-up to last month's Pan Amer­i­can Games, where T&T won six track and field medals.

"I think it was ex­cep­tion­al to get ten medals and fin­ish third on the ta­ble. That was great," he said.

"Sparkle McK­night ran a per­son­al best in the 400 me­tre Hur­dles. Se­moy Hack­ett broke the na­tion­al 200m record. They are peak­ing at the right time."

He added that based on the team's cur­rent form, he was ex­pect­ing a strong show­ing in Bei­jing.

He said: "The World Cham­pi­onships is a dif­fer­ent lev­el than the Pan Amer­i­can Games and NACAC but if they are at their best then they should be com­pet­i­tive... I think that the fe­male sprint re­lay team is poised to be on the podi­um with Se­moy Hack­et and Kel­ly Ann Bap­tiste back on the team."

The squad will next em­bark on a train­ing camp in Bei­jing from Au­gust 12-21 spon­sored by the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny.

Ser­rette said it would give the ath­letes ad­e­quate time to pre­pare and get set­tled. "Ac­cli­ma­tis­ing to the time zone and shak­ing off the jet lag is very crit­i­cal," he said. "It takes three to four days be­fore they can have a good work­out."

Mean­while, team man­ag­er Dur­ley Lu­cas was al­so pleased with the ath­letes' show­ing in Cos­ta Ri­ca.

He said: "I'm sat­is­fied with per­for­mance. Not on­ly did we win ten medals, but a lot of the ath­letes got to the fi­nals and there were lot of fourth place and fifth place fin­ish­es. In an over­all sense, it was an above av­er­age per­for­mance."