Rachael King

IAAF World Cham­pi­onship medal­lists Josanne Lu­cas and Ren­ny Quow re­turned home yes­ter­day. Both ath­letes won bronze medals at the Games held in Berlin, Ger­many in Au­gust. They were greet­ed at a func­tion host­ed at the VIP lounge at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port. Wel­com­ing them were Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs, Gary Hunt, four-time Olympic medal­list Ato Boldon, pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ic Ad­min­is­tra­tion (NAAA) Ephraim Ser­rette and Pub­lic Re­la­tions of Of­fi­cer at the NAAA Pe­ter Samuel. Lu­cas en­tered the his­to­ry books as the first woman to win an in­ter­na­tion­al medal in track for T&T. She fin­ished third in the 400 me­tres hur­dles and al­so es­tab­lished a new na­tion­al record with a time of 53.20 sec­onds. "It was a proud mo­ment for me," said a soft-spo­ken Lu­cas. "The ac­com­plish­ment was even greater as I was go­ing through a per­son­al strug­gle with in­juries.

I knew it was pos­si­ble, though, and it feels good to reach my goal be­cause I knew it could have been done." Ear­li­er this year, Lu­cas set a new na­tion­al record of 55.24 in Bel�m, Bel­gium at the Grande Pr�mio Brasil Caixa meet in May. She was not sat­is­fied with her per­for­mance de­spite break­ing the record and worked along with coach Hen­ry Rolle, who is al­so the coach of T&T's Marc Burns and Ja­maican Ker­ron Stew­art. "I am my biggest crit­ic and now that I have bro­ken through the bar­ri­er, I will be push­ing to ac­com­plish even more."

Quow, the 2006 world ju­nior cham­pi­on in the 400m hur­dles, con­sid­ers his bronze as "one of a kind." "It is re­al­ly a dream come true," said Quow. "I had a good per­for­mance and I feel good about my re­sult."

Quow raced on Sun­day and fin­ished sec­ond to Amer­i­can Je­re­my Wariner at the Van Damme Memo­r­i­al in Brus­sels, Bel­gium. Wariner placed sec­ond at the World Cham­pi­onships be­hind LaShawn Mer­ritt al­so of the US. In his most re­cent out­ings, the two Amer­i­cans has fin­ished ahead of him but he feels an ad­just­ment to his train­ing regime could change that. "I al­ready have a good kick com­ing home so with my coach Wayne Lewis, I will now fo­cus on get­ting stronger," said Quow. Boldon, who was head­ing out the coun­try, came by to con­grat­u­late the two ath­letes. "Lu­cas has end­ed our drought for women track ath­letes and I ex­pect a lot from these two ath­letes," said Boldon. Ser­rette called on cor­po­rate spon­sors to sup­port the lo­cal ath­letes.

"Our ath­letes have de­liv­ered. It is a huge achieve­ment ac­com­plished by these two ath­letes and I am call­ing on cor­po­rate spon­sors to con­tribute to the sport." He al­so made a call for bet­ter cov­er­age of the sport. "We saw the three match­es played by the Un­der-20 team in Egypt and not one race was shown. I am ask­ing for bet­ter cov­er­age of the sport by the me­dia," said Ser­rette. Hunt, like the oth­ers, con­grat­u­lat­ed the two lo­cal ath­letes and promised gov­ern­ment will sup­port all ath­letes. "The gov­ern­ment will be be­hind you from CAC to Com­momwealth, to Pan Am Games to 2012 Olympics in Lon­don," said Hunt. "The NAAA is one of the best per­form­ing NSOs (Na­tion­al Sport Or­gan­i­sa­tion). Keep up the good work." Hunt pre­sent­ed gifts from the new­ly re­brand­ed Min­istry of Sport to Lu­cas and Quow, who head­ed home to To­ba­go.