An­dre Bap­tise

Sil­ver ! Sil­ver ! Sil­ver ! Sil­ver !

Sil­ver was the colour yes­ter­day on the fi­nal night of the 2015 World Cham­pi­onships in Bei­jing, Chi­na. It was de­liv­ered to this coun­try by four brave men on a damp night where clouds threat­ened rain. A tor­ren­tial down­pour sent many scam­per­ing for over three hours.

On the track, though, it was the op­po­si­tion that was sent scam­per­ing as T&T's quar­tet of Ren­ny Quow, La Londe Gor­don, De­on Lendore and Machel Ce­de­nio, woke up 70,000 per­sons in the Bird Nest Sta­di­um with some quick times over the four legs of the mens 4x400 me­tres re­lay fi­nal, on­ly to lose to the more ex­pe­ri­enced USA team, an­chored by 400 me­tres sil­ver medal­list, La Shawn Mer­ritt.

T&T fin­ished sec­ond in a new na­tion­al record of 2.58.20 , eclips­ing the old mark of 2.58.34.

Quow again ran the open­ing leg and gave a much im­proved per­for­mance af­ter his strug­gles in the pre­lim­i­nar­ies.

He hand­ed over to Gor­don who ran the race of his life. This pow­er­ful­ly built man with the heart of a li­on, roared his way for­ward and made up the stag­ger. Turn­ing in­to the home straight, he ran past the Amer­i­can to hand the ba­ton to Lendore in first place.

Lendore led all the way, hand­ing over to Ce­de­nio in first place as T&T chased gold.

Run­ning in­to the home straight, Ce­de­nio was in third, falling be­hind Ja­maican Javon Fran­cis and Mer­ritt, but he did not pan­ic. "I know that is the strongest point of my race. I was calm, I know I have enough leg speed to catch them, so I was still good."

Al­though he passed Fran­cis, he could not go past Mer­ritt.

Lendore, who was the first man off the track af­ter the race, said he and his team­mates were very hap­py to give the coun­try a sil­ver medal on the eve of In­de­pen­dence.

"Af­ter the pre­lims, we knew we had a great chance of medalling and we came out here and de­liv­ered. Our strat­e­gy was to get to run from the front. We want­ed to run free, and to see the best we could do from the lead," Lendore said. "We start­ed off great and we are hap­py. We all gave 110 per cent and we have seen the re­sult. It made us all proud," added Lendore.

Quow was al­so ec­sta­t­ic about the per­for­mance, de­scrib­ing it as well ex­e­cut­ed. "We had a good race plan and did what we want­ed to from the be­gin­ning. We want­ed to hit them from the be­gin­ning so we would not have much work to do and that is what we did."

Gor­don was not hap­py with his start even though his fin­ish was mar­vel­lous. "Once I cut in and messed up a lit­tle. I let the USA man (Tony Mc­Quay) get in­to the lead but I just kept my fo­cus and said I will pass him on the home­stretch and that is what I did," he added.

Ce­de­nio be­lied his youth­ful­ness. "We ran sec­ond to a guy who medalled in the 400, so that was a very good per­for­mance . Every sin­gle one of the team ran good, es­pe­cial­ly the lead off. Ren­ny, La Londe, De­on, we all came to­geth­er. We had a tough de­ci­sion in pick­ing the team but we came to­geth­er fi­nalised it and we felt this was the best team to get the medal here tonight," not­ed Ce­de­nio.

T&T end­ed the Cham­pi­onships with two medals, fol­low­ing the suc­cess of the women's 4 x 100 me­tres team of Kel­ly Ann Bap­tiste, Michelle Lee Ahye, Re­yare Thomas and Se­moy Hack­ett, who won the bronze medal on Sat­ur­day.