Na­tion­al sprint­ers Jereem Richards and Se­moy Hack­ett will race for gold on Fri­day in the fi­nals of their re­spec­tive 200 me­tres events at the Pan Amer­i­can Games af­ter Thurs­day's qual­i­fy­ing races at the Ath­let­ics Sta­di­um in the Na­tion­al Sport­ing Vil­lage in Li­ma Pe­ru.

In cold con­di­tions, Richards qual­i­fied as one of the fastest losers af­ter plac­ing third with 20.48 sec­onds in the first of three heats. The na­tion­al 200m cham­pi­on had the third-fastest time of the qual­i­fiers and will run for the ti­tle at 5.30 pm (T&T time)

T&T's oth­er sprint­er in the event, Kyle Greaux, who was be­hind the lead­ers, ap­peared to pull up lame some 10m out, hold­ing on to his left ham­string as he crossed the fin­ish line in sixth place in 22.71 sec­onds.

Checks with na­tion­al ath­let­ics man­ag­er George Com­mis­siong re­vealed that the sprint­er was be­ing as­sessed by the med­ical team.

In the women's ver­sion of the race, Hack­ett ran a sea­son's best 23.31 sec­onds to book a spot in the medal race. The T&T Na­tion­al Cham­pi­onships bronze medal­list over the same dis­tance record­ed the sixth quick­est time of the eight qual­i­fiers. Her race is set for 5.15 pm

An­oth­er lo­cal sprint­er, Mauri­cia Pri­eto al­so lined up in the first heat and crossed fourth with 23.66 sec­onds in a race won by Ja­maican Shelly-Ann Fras­er-Pryce (22.90). She was 10th over­all.

The Men's 4x100 re­lay semi­fi­nals which were sched­uled to run last evening were scratched and is a straight to fi­nal set for Fri­day.

Tyra Git­tens dropped out of con­tention of the women's hep­tathlon af­ter plac­ing last in the long jump and javelin dis­ci­plines and she did not fin­ish the event, opt­ing out of the fi­nal dis­ci­pline, the 800m race.

Af­ter six dis­ci­plines she was in sixth place with a score of 4,971 points. She seemed to en­ter day two with an in­jury as her right thigh was heav­i­ly ban­daged. In the long jump event, her best dis­tance of 5.44 me­tres, earned her 683 points and in the javelin, her dis­tance of 32.41 me­tres got her 522 points.

Git­tens had closed day one as the leader with 3,766 points af­ter she earned 963 in the 200m; in the high jump 1,016; in the shot put, 756 and in the 100m hur­dles 1,031.

Late Wednes­day, in the men's shot put event, Akeem Stew­art placed 12th of the 13 par­tic­i­pants with his best toss, mea­sur­ing 18.25 me­tres. The na­tion­al cham­pi­on got to the mark on his first at­tempt. He reg­is­tered 17.86m and 17.87m in his oth­er two throws re­spec­tive­ly.

IN SWIM­MING

Dy­lan Carter qual­i­fied for the fi­nal of the Men's 100m back­stroke, win­ning the third and fi­nal heat in 54.95 sec­onds, the fourth-fastest time of the eight fi­nal­ists.

He will be look­ing to make amends for just miss­ing out on a medal af­ter plac­ing fourth in the men's 200m freestyle fi­nal on Wednes­day night.

The na­tion­al swim­mer, rac­ing in lane six, touched the wall in 1:47.78 sec­onds, just some .07 sec­onds be­hind bronze medal­list USA's Drew Ki­bler (1:47.71) in a race dom­i­nat­ed by Brazil­ian duo Fer­nan­do Muh­len­berg (1:46.68) and Breno Mar­tins (1:47.47).

Ja­da Cha­toor was up next in the Women's 800m freestyle timed fi­nal. Com­pet­ing in lane two, the lo­cal dis­tance swim­mer placed fourth in fi­nal in 9:22.79 sec­onds.

In the Women's 100m freestyle, Giselle Gur­soy fin­ished sev­enth in heat four with a time of 59.34 sec­onds and placed 22nd over­all. She failed to qual­i­fy for the B fi­nal.

In the Women's 100m back­stroke, Gabriela Don­ahue's time of 1:04.74 me­tres which saw her place fifth and 11th over­all. The per­for­mance was good enough to get in­to the B fi­nal.

Al­so on Wednes­day night, Gur­soy placed sixth with 2:06.98 in the women's 200m freestyle B fi­nal while in the men's 100m but­ter­fly B fi­nal, Kael Yorke was sev­enth with a 55.90-clock­ing.

IN HOCK­EY

Three goals in the sec­ond half saw the Glenn "Fi­do" Fran­cis-coached T&T hock­ey men earn the right to play for fifth place af­ter down­ing Mex­i­co, 3-0.

"To­day (yes­ter­day) was a pret­ty good day for us be­cause we got our first win of the tour­na­ment," said Fran­cis.

"The dif­fer­ence was we scored on our scor­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties still I'm not pleased, we should have scored more but I think to­day is a good day still.

"The game wasn't the best game we played for the tour­na­ment but again our main ob­jec­tive was to win."

And that they did thanks to goals from Teague and Tariq Mar­cano, who came alive in the last two quar­ters with the for­mer net­ting a dou­ble in an even­ly bal­anced match-up in the open­ing quar­ters.

The match re­mained goal­less for the open­ing pe­ri­ods with Mex­i­co's Ale­jan­dro Mendez miss­ing the lone penal­ty cor­ner in the first quar­ter. In the sec­ond stan­za, T&T suf­fered a sim­i­lar fate with vet­er­an Kwand­wane Browne go­ing wide of the tar­get and Shaquille David's field goal be­ing saved by Mex­i­can goal­keep­er Jose Her­nan­dez.

Ear­ly in the third ses­sion, T&T's Daniel By­er had his at­tempt blocked by the op­pos­ing keep­er but it was Teague, who fi­nal­ly got one past Her­nan­dez in the 43.00 min­utes, giv­ing the na­tion­al hock­ey men a 1-0, head­ing in­to the fi­nal quar­ter.

He re­turned some three min­utes lat­er to score an­oth­er field goal (46.09). The Mex­i­cans were caught with their guard down be­cause with sec­onds of goal num­ber two that Tariq (46.28)sealed the first win for T&T in the hock­ey com­pe­ti­tion.

Fran­cis said: "We were tac­ti­cal­ly bet­ter than the Mex­i­cans by far. We got a lot of op­por­tu­ni­ties to dom­i­nate the game. In all de­part­ments we played well, our goal-keep­er did well, the de­fend­ers did well, the for­wards did well so that's a plus for us."

On Sat­ur­day, the lo­cal team will meet Cu­ba, who in the match be­fore crushed Pe­ru, 7-0. The fifth-place match will start at 12.45 pm (T&T time).

Fran­cis said, "Mov­ing for­ward we know the Cubans beat us in our first game (3-1) so we go­ing to pre­pare for them. So far no in­juries every­thing is go­ing good for us."

IN GOLF

T&T golfer Ys­abelle Lawrence will have work to do to­day in the women's com­pe­ti­tion af­ter fin­ish­ing tied in 30th spot af­ter Thurs­day's first round.

She shot 80 on the day to be tied with Bar­ba­dos' Emi­ly Odwin, who both were nine over par.on a par 71 course.