Olympic gold medal­list Keshorn Wal­cott heads a list of 21 ath­letes who will rep­re­sent T&T at the 15th IAAF World Cham­pi­onships which will be held in Bei­jing, Chi­na, from Au­gust 22-30.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2,000 ath­letes from more than 200 na­tions are ex­pect­ed to take part dur­ing the nine days of com­pe­ti­tion. The fi­nal en­try dead­line for the Cham­pi­onships was at mid­night on Mon­day.

The Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ics Ad­min­is­tra­tions of T&T (NAAA), gave their ath­letes the full op­por­tu­ni­ty to achieve the qual­i­fy­ing stan­dards. Tak­ing ad­van­tage of this was 400m hur­dler Sparkle McK­night, who not on­ly won sil­ver on the last evening of com­pe­ti­tion at the North Amer­i­can, Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean Se­nior Cham­pi­onships in Cos­ta Ri­ca, on Sun­day, but ran her per­son­al best 55.41 which was good enough to qual­i­fy (56.20).

Wal­cott, who in­jured his an­kle about three weeks ago while com­pet­ing in Mona­co pri­or to the Pan Amer­i­can Games, has been un­der­go­ing ther­a­py while train­ing and is hop­ing to be 100 per­cent ready to make it to the top of the podi­um on Au­gust 26 when the javel­lin fi­nals will be held. In­clud­ed in the team are 19-year old Machel Ce­de­nio, re­cent dou­ble Pan Am medal­list, Lalonde Gor­don, dou­ble Olympic medal­list; Com­mon­wealth; Pan Am and NACAC medal­ist, Mikel Thomas na­tion­al record hold­er (110m hur­dles) Pan Am sil­ver/bronze and NACAC gold medal­ist, and de­fend­ing World Cham­pi­on and Com­mon­wealth sil­ver medal­list Je­hue Gor­don, who will al­so be try­ing to make it back on­to the podi­um af­ter deal­ing with some mi­nor in­juries.

On the ladies side, Com­mon­wealth sil­ver and Pan Am gold medal­ist Cleopa­tra Borel, will be the first ath­lete in ac­tion at the Cham­pi­onships on the open­ing day. 17-year-old Pan Am Ju­nior 100m Cham­pi­on and World Youth sil­ver medal­list Khal­i­fa St. Fort will be mak­ing her first ap­pear­ance at a se­nior lev­el. NACAC sil­ver medal­lists Se­moy Hack­ett (200m) who broke her own na­tion­al record two days ago and Sparkle McK­night (400mH) both seem to be peak­ing at the right time. Most of the lo­cal­ly based ath­letes fly out to­day. The re­main­der of the team will ar­rive in Chi­na over the next two days where they will set up a train­ing camp which is be­ing spon­sored by NGC.

Team

Ke­ston Bled­man, Ron­dell So­ril­lo, Dan- Neil Teles­ford, Em­manuel Carter, Kyle Geaux, Mikel Thomas, Machel Ce­de­nio, Ren­ny Quow, Jar­rin Solomon, Lalonde Gor­don, De­on Lendore, Je­hue Gor­don, Keshorn Wal­cott, Cleopa­tra Borel, Kel­ly-Anne Bap­tiste, Khal­i­fa St Fort, Michelle Lee Ahye, Se­moy Hack­ett, Re­yare Thomas, Ka­maria Du­rant, Sparkle McK­night.

Of­fi­cials; Dex­ter Voi­son (man­ag­er), Dr. Ian Hy­po­lite (head coach), Ed­win Skin­ner, Charles Joseph, Gun­ness Per­sad, Ato Boldon (sprint & hur­dles/re­lays coach), Is­mael Lopez Mast­sra­pa (throws coach), Dr Anyl Gopeesing, Dr. Verne Al­leyne, Ian Sharpe, Zephri­nus Nicholas, Nicole Fuentes (med­ical).