An­dre Bap­tise

With two days re­main­ing in this, the 15th edi­tion of the World Cham­pi­onships, cur­rent­ly be­ing held in Chi­na, T&T has two more op­por­tu­ni­ties to achieve a medal in the women's 4x100 me­tres and Men's 4x400m re­lay events. Last night at 10.52 pm (TT time), T&T's 4x400m men were sched­uled to com­pete in heat two.

Head coach of the World Cham­pi­onships team, Dr Ian Hy­po­lite, was cau­tious say­ing, "Noth­ing is go­ing to come eas­i­ly. Our guys know that they have to work for it and get through the round first so that is our first ob­jec­tive, qual­i­fy for the fi­nals.

"At the mo­ment, it is safe to say, that giv­en Machel (Ce­de­nio) achieve­ment of reach­ing a fi­nal at 19 years, we are go­ing to give him a rest and al­low the oth­er mem­bers of the team to run in the first heat on Sat­ur­day (last night)," said Hy­po­lite

"Our plan is to run smart, but qual­i­fy safe­ly. This team is very unit­ed and well pre­pared and they are all ea­ger for suc­cess al­though we have re­mind­ed them it is not go­ing to be easy but we must fan­cy our­selves once we are in the fi­nals to get a medal."

If the team qual­i­fies, it will be in the 4x400m fi­nal sched­uled for 8.25 am to­mor­row morn­ing (TT time). The team for the heats will be in or­der of Ren­ny Quow, Jar­rin Solomon, Dion Lendore and Lalonde Gor­don.

"All of the ex­pec­ta­tions are there and this team un­der­stands what that means but I ex­pect that sort of knowl­edge of the sup­port and back­ing of the peo­ple, can on­ly in­flu­ence our per­for­mance in a pos­i­tive way."

T&T's women will al­so be in ac­tion this morn­ing at 12.08 am in the 4x100 women's re­lay and this promis­es to be quite an in­ter­est­ing con­test. T&T has been drawn in lane sev­en of the sec­ond heat, with USA in lane eight, Nether­lands in lane nine and Ukraine in lane three. The top three from each of the two heats will qual­i­fy for the fi­nal as well as the two fastest losers. The fi­nal is sched­uled for 8.45 am (TT time), to­day.

"We are fi­nal­is­ing all our prepa­ra­tions for this event and while there is still some con­cern with Se­moy Hack­ett as she is still com­plain­ing about stom­ach pain. We will en­sure that the team does not take un­nec­es­sary chances. The goal re­mains to get the ba­ton around safe­ly and that is very crit­i­cal," said Dr Hy­po­lite.

Dr Hy­po­lite is fo­cused on the process to en­sure the end re­sult is achieved and that is reach­ing the podi­um.

"So the em­pha­sis is on reach­ing the fi­nal, do­ing the cor­rect things. We have gone through in prac­tice and then once we reach the fi­nals, the hunt then is to get a medal but at the mo­ment the team is work­ing well to­geth­er but noth­ing will come easy. We have to work to it.

"Let us not for­get, this is a very com­pet­i­tive event so that the team that makes less mis­takes is nor­mal­ly well re­ward­ed. We know that and our ladies have been told about this fact," said a qui­et­ly con­fi­dent Dr Hy­po­lite.

The lat­est in­for­ma­tion is that Se­moy Hack­ett is okay but will not run in the heats, in­stead the team will run in the fol­low­ing or­der of Kel­ly Ann Bap­tiste, Michelle-Lee Ahye, Re­yare Thomas and Khal­i­fa St Fort. (AB)