Out­stand­ing T&T Olympian and 400 me­tres gold medal­ist, the late De­on Lendore, was posthu­mous­ly ho­n­oured with an in­duc­tion in­to the Hall of Fame at the pres­ti­gious Texas A&M Uni­ver­si­ty last Fri­day.

The T&T leg­end died trag­i­cal­ly in a car ac­ci­dent in Texas on Jan­u­ary 10, 2022 at just 29 years old while un­der­tak­ing coach­ing du­ties at the uni­ver­si­ty. His award was re­ceived by his for­mer head coach, Pat Hen­ry, with whom he shared a close re­la­tion­ship.

Guardian Me­dia Sports reached out to Lendore's moth­er, Chrispina Ed­mund, who was proud of the in­duc­tion and had noth­ing but fond mem­o­ries of her in­flu­en­tial son, "Don't mind that he has passed on. The school is still do­ing things to up­lift his name and to car­ry on his lega­cy."

In re­call­ing the all too short life of her son, she said, "When we re­flect on his life, we see that he was dif­fer­ent. He start­ed off as a very lov­ing child and ma­tured in­to a role mod­el for all of his com­pa­tri­ots."

Lendore was a proud prod­uct of the Abi­lene Wild­cats Sports club in T&T, af­ter which he honed his tal­ents while at­tend­ing Queens Roy­al Col­lege at the high school lev­el.

He would then go on to fur­ther his ath­let­ics ca­reer by at­tend­ing Texas A&M Uni­ver­si­ty af­ter gain­ing a well-earned ath­let­ic schol­ar­ship, this break­through see­ing him quick­ly im­prov­ing and hit­ting the podi­um while rep­re­sent­ing T&T at the en­su­ing Carif­ta Games and the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean Ju­nior Cham­pi­onships.

He al­so de­vel­oped an out­stand­ing rep­u­ta­tion on the Amer­i­can NCAA cir­cuit while rep­re­sent­ing Texas A&M, win­ning the award as the uni­ver­si­ty’s top male ath­lete in 2013/2014.

Lendore was among eight in­ductees in­to the Texas A&M Hall of Fame, along with Shea Groom (soc­cer); Jer­rod Kap­pler (men's swim­ming and div­ing); Ash­ley Knoll (women's golf); Jake Matthews (foot­ball); Kristie Smed­srud-Dock (vol­ley­ball); Jene­ba Tar­moh (women's track and field) and Michael Wacha (base­ball).