Clydeen Mc­Don­ald

T&T's Mori­ba Morain sealed qual­i­fi­ca­tion to the semi­fi­nal round of the Men's 100-me­tre Dash on the first day of the sixth IAAF World Youth Cham­pi­onships in Sudtirol, Italy yes­ter­day. Morain post­ed a time of 10.61 sec­onds to win the sec­ond of four quar­ter­fi­nal heats. Plac­ing be­hind Morain, who had clocked 10.75 in the first round were Gio­van­ni Gal­bieri (10.65) of Italy and Ratu Banuve Tabakau­coro (10.77) of Fi­ji.

T&T's Jamol James al­so qual­i­fied for the 100m sprint semi­fi­nal af­ter plac­ing third in the fourth heat. James clocked 10.84 be­hind Ry­ota Ya­m­a­ga­ta (10.62) of Japan and Rich­mond Collins (10.78) of South Africa. T&T fe­male sprint­ers were not as lucky over the dis­tance af­ter show­ing some promise in the morn­ing ses­sion where Kai Selvon placed third in heat two in a time of 12.12 and Cum­ber­batch placed sec­ond in heat six in 12.20.

Both com­peti­tors crashed out of the com­pe­ti­tion at the quar­ter­fi­nal stage. Selvon fin­ished eighth in the fourth quar­ter­fi­nal in 12.09 with Cum­ber­batch fin­ish­ing sev­enth in first quar­ter­fi­nal in 12.25. Na­tion­al 400m Un­der 18 cham­pi­on De­on Lendore qual­i­fied for the semi­fi­nal of his pet event af­ter clock­ing 48.66 to place sec­ond in the sec­ond of eight heat. Reg­is­ter­ing the sixth fastest time of the round Lendore placed be­hind Ki­rani James (48.45) of Grena­da with Ab­dul­lah Abkar (49.44) of Kaza­khstan third.

An­oth­er T&T run­ner Bran­don Ben­jamin, who com­pet­ed in the event, clocked 50.16 in the eighth heat of the event miss­ing the chance of qual­i­fy­ing as one of the fastest losers by just 0.50 of a sec­ond.