An­dre Bap­tise

re­port­ing from Bei­jing

Two men, one goal, two dif­fer­ent prob­lems but sad­ly the same out­come.Je­hue Gor­don, the de­fend­ing World 400 me­tres hur­dles cham­pi­on, crashed out in the first round in heat two of his event at the IAAF World Cham­pi­onships in Bei­jing, Chi­na.Ke­ston Bled­man, T&T's reign­ing 100 me­tres cham­pi­on, bowed out of the Men's 100m in the first heat, when he crossed the line hob­bling in a dis­con­cert­ing 10.75.

For Gor­don, this was per­haps no sur­prise as he had been hav­ing a tough year with in­juries."I did not give the show­ing I want­ed to as the de­fend­ing cham­pi­on. It was al­ways about com­pet­ing de­spite every­thing else," said Gor­don.

"Ear­li­er in the year, I had a quad in­jury and that set me back but I did the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion but still I felt things were not ok. We did tests but noth­ing was show­ing, how­ev­er on­ly re­cent­ly af­ter I de­scribed some symp­toms to Dr (Anil) Gopeesingh, and we did some more in-depth tests we were able to find it was a sports her­nia, so again it was back to a lot of re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and in the end, I was too rusty.

"With about 100 me­tres to go, I knew that some­thing was wrong as I thought I was close to the oth­er guys but be­ing so deep down (In Lane 2), when I re­alised it, they were get­ting stronger and go­ing away from me," said Gor­don who fin­ished sev­enth in a time of 49.71."How­ev­er, I will have to re­group and be bet­ter pre­pared for Rio in 2016 and en­sure this does not hap­pen again. This was nev­er about tak­ing the easy way out, I am fight­er and I want­ed to come here and give it a shot."

While Gor­don would nei­ther rule out pos­si­ble surgery or con­tin­ued ther­a­py, he was cer­tain that there would be more dis­cus­sions with his team and the med­ical staff on what was the best way for­ward.Gor­don tweet­ed af­ter­wards that the re­sult would not dis­cour­age him from his ul­ti­mate goal of win­ning gold at the Rio Olympics next year.

"Down but not out!! Tuff, ruff all kind of stuff. Wasn't easy try­ing to de­fend my ti­tle but there is a big­ger pic­ture ahead," he told his 5,907 fol­low­ers.

Mean­while, a proud Gor­don can look for­ward to grad­u­at­ing in Oc­to­ber, with first class ho­n­ours in Sports Man­age­ment from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and he is cor­rect­ly proud of this his­toric achieve­ment by a lo­cal­ly coached and lo­cal­ly ed­u­cat­ed son of the soil.

Ques­tioned on a con­tin­u­a­tion of stud­ies to­wards a Mas­ters pro­gramme, Gor­don cal­cu­lat­ed­ly re­marked: "With the Olympics next year in Rio, I do not want to push it too much but I will be back as I feel the dis­ap­point­ment for all of those who sup­port me and all of T&T to­day.

"I am at ze­ro per cent. I have been hav­ing some pain in my groin since af­ter the tri­als in T&T and af­ter run­ning one round in Lau­sanne, Switzer­land, the pain got worst and my coach­es told T&T that I can­not go to Pan Am be­cause I am hurt­ing and my fo­cus was on the World Cham­pi­onships.

"But then I went Pan Am and it was three rounds and it made it worse. I went Pan Am be­cause they said they were giv­ing us fund­ing and be­cause they were giv­ing us fund­ing, I have to go and that is wrong. I came in here with the fifth fastest time and it is very dis­ap­point­ing for me get­ting knocked out in the first round."

Af­ter fail­ing to ad­vance to the next round, Bled­man said, "I came here hurt, you can ask Dr Gopeesingh. I keep get­ting shots up­on shots in my groin. It was very, very painful. I got some in­jec­tions that made tears come to my eyes. It was so painful. This is the first time I have ever got­ten knocked out in the first round, even as a ju­nior, that has nev­er hap­pened. It is hard, from the time I pushed out the blocks, I felt it like it ripped, I tried and tried but could not go.

"My sea­son is done here. I have to pull out of all of my meets. My di­a­mond meet and every­thing, that is it for me. There is now no re­lay team be­cause we were al­ready down to a bare four and sor­ry to say, this is on Trinidad...I told them and my coach told them it was not smart for me to go to the Pan Am.

"I do not know who it is, NAAA (Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion for Ath­let­ic Ad­min­is­tra­tions) or TTOC (T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee), but I more feel it is TTOC , be­cause it is like we giv­ing you guys fund­ing so once they call you, you have to come on...but look at [the fact that] no one sent their top ath­letes there but I had to go," a sad Bled­man dis­closed.

"There is a need to lis­ten to the ath­letes some­times. It is not al­ways about fund­ing. Yes you giv­ing us fund­ing but there are times when you lis­ten. In the end it was not in god's plans for me to­day (yes­ter­day), so I will go back and pray and as I al­ways say, win, lose or draw, all the glo­ry be­longs to God," said Bled­man.

We await word from ei­ther the NAAA or the TTOC on this mat­ter. For the mo­ment though and af­ter Day 1, there is a weary sigh from T&T, as a lot of this could have been re­solved dif­fer­ent­ly, it would ap­pear.