Sprint­er Jereem Richards' in­ten­tion to ho­n­our his fall­en col­league De­on Lendore at the men's 400 me­tres fi­nal of the IAAF World Ath­let­ics In­door Cham­pi­onships at the Stark Are­na in Bel­grade, Ser­bia, yes­ter­day end­ed in an emo­tion­al but joy­ful mo­ment.

Know­ing it would take some­thing spe­cial to ho­n­our his col­league who was killed in a ve­hic­u­lar ac­ci­dent in Jan­u­ary, "The Dream", as he is com­mon­ly called, bust­ed out from the start and main­tained a con­sis­tent speed through­out the race, to cross the fin­ish line in a cham­pi­onship record time of 45 sec­onds flat for the gold medal.

"This was my ac­tu­al race plan and I stuck to it to a T. I did every­thing I need­ed to do to win. I knew go­ing in­to the race these guys are all quar­ter-mil­ers. What I had against them was my speed and I used it to pull them out of their com­fort zone," he said dur­ing an in­ter­view short­ly af­ter.

"I trained a lot with quar­ter-mil­ers this year, longer than I usu­al­ly would. My train­ing part­ner Wayde van Niek­erk helped me every sin­gle day, he was ex­cel­lent. If I had a bad day he told me to keep my head up, say­ing I could do it.

"I want to thank him. That was very ben­e­fi­cial for me this year.”

Richards en­tered the race bent on eas­ing his mind from the deaths of a few loved ones that threat­ened his sta­bil­i­ty, say­ing apart from Lendore, who died on Jan­u­ary 10 in the Unit­ed States and was buried on March 3 in Trinidad, he lost oth­ers.

"It was ex­tra mo­ti­va­tion for me. De­on was one of the pi­o­neers of my gen­er­a­tion, he mo­ti­vat­ed a lot of us in T&T, prov­ing to us that it is pos­si­ble to run fast, pos­si­ble to run fast and get an ed­u­ca­tion and be a pro­fes­sion­al ath­lete. So with the pass­ing of him, I just want­ed to come out there and make him proud.

"Al­so, I lost my grand­moth­er, I lost my grand­fa­ther's broth­er ear­li­er this year, so with all that on my mind I just want­ed to go out there and make them all proud," Richards said.

Lendore, al­so a 400m sprint­er, twice came with­in range of win­ning a gold medal at that event in the past, as he claimed the bronze medal in Birm­ing­ham, Eng­land, four years ago, and al­so in Port­land, Ore­gon, in 2016.

400m champ Jereem Richards in Serbia.

Richards' gold medal now means he is the first T&T sprint­er to have won that event.

A world 200m bronze medal­list in Lon­don five years ago, Richards ran the race of his life, first dur­ing the open­ing 300m ahead of the field to re­ceive the bell lap. He then used his ad­van­tage in speed cou­pled with his de­ter­mi­na­tion to cross the fin­ish line ahead of the USA's Trevor Bassitt, whose per­son­al best time of 45.05 sec­onds earned him the sil­ver medal. Swe­den's Carl Bengt­strom was third in 45.33.

Last month, at the World Ath­let­ics In­door Tour Gold meet­ing on Stat­en Is­land in New York, USA, Richards pow­ered across the line against a strong field to crush his in­door 400m per­son­al best and win in 45.83. He again did his close friend proud and clinched the ti­tle in record-break­ing style in Bel­grade22.

Pres Weekes: All of T&T salutes you

Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes con­grat­u­lat­ed Richards on his out­stand­ing achieve­ment. "You have done your coun­try proud, Ja­reem, and all of Trinidad and To­ba­go salutes you."