No ath­lete was able to meet the au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fy­ing times for the up­com­ing Tokyo Games in Japan at the first of two Olympic Tri­als set by the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ics Ad­min­is­tra­tion of T&T (NAAATT), on Monday at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo, Port-of-Spain.

It was a tough task to at­tain the qual­i­fy­ing stan­dards for lo­cal track ath­letes, who have not raced com­pet­i­tive­ly since ear­ly last month due to the on­go­ing coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic.

Jonathan Far­in­ha, 25, came the clos­est, lead­ing a sweep of the top po­si­tions by the Abi­lene Wild­cats Track and Field Club in the men’s 100 me­tres as they tried to go un­der the 10.05-sec­ond qual­i­fy­ing stan­dard.

He won sec­tion two, the faster of the two sec­tions in the timed fi­nals, with a wind-as­sist­ed (1.8) time of 10.39 sec­onds fol­lowed by twin broth­er Nathan (10.56) while sec­tion one win­ner, Ay­o­dele Taffe, was third over­all with 10.61 (2.2).

It was sim­i­lar re­sult in the women’s ver­sion of the race with no sprint­er meet­ing the re­quired 11.15 qual­i­fy­ing time. Sim­plex pair Leah Bertrand and Ka­maria Du­rant crossed first and sec­ond with times of 11.52 and 11.90, re­spec­tive­ly while in third place was the reign­ing Youth Sports­woman of the Year—Shani­qua Bas­combe of Cougars with a 11.97-clock­ing.

The Sim­plex duo dom­i­nat­ed again in the women’s 200m dash (22.80-stan­dard) but flipped po­si­tions with Du­rant (24.45) edg­ing out Bertrand (24.51) at the line in the half-lap event while Wild­cats’ Khadi­ja Pick­er­ing had to set­tle for third place in 25.57.

The men’s 200m lost some of its in­ter­est af­ter the Far­in­ha broth­ers, Taffe and Avin­dale Smith pulled out of the event. Sha­keem McK­ay went on to win in 21.33.

Ear­li­er in the men’s 400m event, with lo­cal quar­ter­mil­ers try­ing to achieve the 44.90-stan­dard, they too were not quick enough. Un­at­tached run­ner Kird­ell Mc In­tosh topped the one-lap event with a 49.12-tim­ing fol­lowed by Joshua Mas­call (Fyz­abad) with 49.26 in the run­ner-up spot and Eli­jah Joseph (Mount­ing Ea­gles) in third place with 49.31.

In the women’s 400m, on­ly two run­ners were in the line-up and they did not meet the 51.35-stan­dard with Caliyah Wal­lace of Cougars win­ning in 59.95 ahead of Ma­li­ka Coutain of the Point Fortin Nets Jets (PFNJ) in a far-off sec­ond with 1:03.58. The sec­ond and fi­nal Olympic tri­als will un­fold on Sun­day at the same venue.