An­dre Bap­tise

in Bei­jing

Michelle-Lee Ahye joined Kel­ly-Ann Bap­tiste as the on­ly two fe­male T&T ath­letes to con­test the fi­nals of the World Cham­pi­onships here yes­ter­day but nei­ther could earn the coun­try's first medal in the 100 me­tres which was won by Ja­maica's Shelly-Ann Fras­er-Pryce.Lee Ahye fin­ished fifth and Bap­tiste, sixth, as Fras­er-Pryce re­tained her ti­tle to give Ja­maica a sprint dou­ble, fol­low­ing on Us­ain Bolt's suc­cess one day ear­li­er, in the men's equiv­a­lent.

Fras­er-Pryce was nev­er se­ri­ous­ly chal­lenged, mo­tor­ing to a 10.76 vic­to­ry with Dafne Schip­pers of the Nether­lands sec­ond in 10.81 and Amer­i­can Tori Bowie (10.86) third. Ja­maica's Veron­i­ca Camp­bell-Browne was fouth in 10.91.Ahye fin­ished in 10.98 while Bap­tiste clocked 11.01. Natash­sa Mor­ri­son of Ja­maica (11.02) and Nige­ria's Bless­ing Ok­a­gag­bare (11.02) com­plet­ed the field.

Ear­li­er, Bap­tiste was sec­ond and Ahye, third, in their re­spec­tive semi­fi­nals.Both were dis­ap­point­ed at not be­ing among the medals but ex­pressed sat­is­fac­tion with their per­for­mances.Ahye was com­ing back from in­jury while Bap­tiste was re­turn­ing to com­pe­ti­tion af­ter serv­ing out her time fol­low­ing her sus­pen­sion since 2013.

Ahye ad­mit­ted to be­ing ner­vous be­fore the fi­nal. "It was hell. I was scared, I al­most threw twice but I got over it so I hope to learn from this."She said she will be­gin to fo­cus on the sprint re­lay lat­er in the week.

Bap­tiste said while she was dis­ap­point­ed at not medalling, she felt good at get­ting to the fi­nals. "I feel good. I am a bit dis­ap­point­ed I did not get a medal but to be hon­est, I am not that dis­ap­point­ed be­cause if you had told me at the be­gin­ning of the year that I would be in the fi­nal, I would have doubt­ed my­self. To come here and run un­der 11 sec­onds and make it to the fi­nals is a great ac­com­plish­ment," she said.

Bap­tiste said she knew she was not go­ing to see any one of her ri­vals on the in­side be­cause of where she was drawn. "So Tori had a great start and I just tried to feed off her and when I felt Bless­ing com­ing on the out­side at the end, I just tried to hold my form and hope that I was one of the top three be­cause it was hard to see the oth­ers. I ran as hard as I could and that is just what I had in my legs for this race."

She too is eye­ing a medal in the sprint re­lay. "I think all of us are fo­cused for the 4x100. We all know that we have the foot speed but it is not about that, it is about pass­ing the ba­ton and we have been work­ing with Ato (Boldon) on our hand­offs and things have been go­ing great, so we look for­ward to per­form­ing re­al­ly good."

Bap­tiste is hope­ful that the sup­port will con­tin­ue. "I want the peo­ple of T&T to be hap­py es­pe­cial­ly I was hap­py that Michele was in the fi­nal. To watch a cham­pi­onship meet and see two T&T ladies in the fi­nals for the first time in his­to­ry, has to make you hap­py."

The oth­er T&T sprint­er, Se­moy Hack­ett, ran a sea­son best of 11.13 but could on­ly fin­ished fifth in her semi­fi­nal. She too, was pleased with her per­for­mance. "I was hap­py as this was my goal to do a best time and pre­pare for the 200 me­tres and then the 4x100 re­lays."