CLAY­TON CLARKE

Sport Cor­re­spon­dent

Michelle-Lee Ahye and Tyra Git­tens-Spotsville will rep­re­sent T&T at the World In­door Track and Field Cham­pi­onships in Nan­jing, Chi­na from March 21-23.

Ahye will rep­re­sent T&T in the women's 60 me­tres dash while Git­tens-Spotsville in the women's long jump event.

Both earned their places based on the World In­door Rank­ings. Ahye is at 14th on the women's 60m stand­ings, safe­ly among the top 56 ath­letes el­i­gi­ble to com­pete while Git­tens-Spotsville is al­so at 14th in her event, the women's long jump. The top 16 have qual­i­fied for Nan­jing.

Ahye is head­ing to her sixth World In­door while Git­tens-Spotsville is mak­ing her de­but.

Their se­lec­tion was an­nounced by the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ic Ad­min­is­tra­tion of T&T (NAAATT) via a press re­lease yes­ter­day.

Ahye, the na­tion­al record hold­er (7.09 sec­onds), reached the fi­nals in 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2022 World In­door Cham­pi­onships. At the 2024 edi­tion in Glas­gow, Scot­land, the Care­nage sprint­er was 26th over­all in the pre­lim­i­nary round af­ter fin­ish­ing fifth in heat four. The Tran­quil­i­ty Sec­ondary School past stu­dent missed out on a medal at the 2016 World In­doors in Port­land, Ore­gon, USA when she was fourth in the fi­nal in 7.11 sec­onds.

The 2015 World Out­door Cham­pi­onships 4x100m bronze-medal­list re­lied on the World Rank­ings route to qual­i­fy for Nan­jing as her best time for this year, 7.24 set in fin­ish­ing sec­ond in Fayet­teville, Arkansas on Feb­ru­ary 21, was short of the World In­door stan­dard (7.15). The 2018 Com­mon­wealth Games women's 100m cham­pi­on al­so clocked 7.37 in Texas on Jan­u­ary 31.

Sev­en­teen-year-old Lisa Raye has sped un­der the stan­dard are she zoomed to 7.13 in New York in Feb­ru­ary.

Git­tens-Spotsville, al­so de­pend­ed on the World List­ing to book her spot. Her best jump for the year, 6.57m, was off the 6.90m-stan­dard. The mul­ti­ple na­tion­al record-hold­er (long jump, high jump, pen­tathlon, he­pathlon) achieved her 6.57m mark in Texas on Jan­u­ary 17. She al­so record­ed 6.45m in New York on Jan­u­ary 25.

Ahye's fourth-place fin­ish in 2016 is the top lo­cal T&T po­si­tion by a woman at the World In­door Cham­pi­onships to date along with Cleopa­tra Borel, who was al­so fourth in the women's shot put in 2016.

Jereem Richards won the 2022 World In­door's 400m ti­tle. The late De­on Lendore has won the most medals, three bronzes–400m (2016 & 2018) and 4x400m (2018). T&T al­so won bronze in the men's 4x400m in 2012.

Long dis­tance coach and for­mer marathon run­ner Paul Voisin, first vice-pres­i­dent of the NAAATT will ac­com­pa­ny the ath­letes as man­ag­er/coach with Nicole Fuentes Charles as the team med­ical of­fi­cial.