Jaden Marchan de­liv­ered a 45.80 sec­onds per­for­mance in the fi­nal of the men’s 400 me­tres of the Ju­nior Pan Amer­i­can Games in Asun­cion, Paraguay, to seal a sil­ver medal for T&T on Wednes­day.

How­ev­er, his com­pa­tri­ot Sha­keem McK­ay, who was sec­ond in the semi­fi­nal num­ber one on Tues­day, just missed out on a podi­um fin­ish in the fourth po­si­tion in 45.87. Both men had im­proved times from their runs in the semis. Marchan post­ed 46.26 sec­onds for his tri­umph in the semis, but he was at his very best yes­ter­day with his 45.80 per­for­mance, which came fol­low­ing a re­ac­tion time of 0.201.

Ja­maican Jasauna Den­nis clinched the gold medal, hav­ing ben­e­fit­ed from a 0.170 re­ac­tion time at the start, to dri­ve home in 45.56 sec­onds. He was one of two Ja­maicans in the race, with the oth­er, Shaemar Uter, man­ag­ing the fifth-place fin­ish in 46.13.

Brazil­ian Vini­cius Galeno was al­so among the medals, and like the oth­ers, he pro­duced an im­proved time from the 46.44 he de­liv­ered on Tues­day, for the bronze medal in 45.83 sec­onds. McK­ay’s 45.98 sec­onds in the fourth spot was fol­lowed by Uter (fifth), Brazil­ian Jad­son De Li­ma in sixth in 46.50, Guyana’s Malachi Austin in sev­enth in 46.67, and Ross Wal­rond, the Bar­ba­di­an, in 47.20 sec­onds to com­plete the fin­ish­ers.

Marchan’s sil­ver has now tak­en the T&T medal tal­ly to 10 medals, in­clu­sive of a gold won by 100-me­tre sprint­er Shani­qua Bas­combe and eight oth­er bronze medals.

Mean­while, T&T’s team of Chloe Fras­er and Jor­dane Thong en­dured a pe­ri­od of ex­treme pres­sure against Ecuador in Group D of the Team Ta­ble Ten­nis play-off.

The T&T girls went down to Ecuador 3-1 on Ta­ble Two of the Ta­ble Ten­nis Sta­di­um, their sec­ond such loss of the tour­na­ment.

Fras­er was the lone bright spark for the girls in red, white, and black, as her tri­umph over Keimy An­chun­dia in the open­ing sin­gles match, 3-1, pro­vid­ed ear­ly hopes. Fras­er, who de­feat­ed Ar­i­an­na Es­trel­la of Do­mini­ca 4-2 and Stu­ti Kashyap of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da on her way to the quar­ter­fi­nal of the in­di­vid­ual sin­gles at the week­end, opened with a bat­tling 14-12 tri­umph over the Ecuado­ri­an be­fore dou­bling her ad­van­tage to 2-0 with an 11-8 sec­ond-set tri­umph.

But she dropped her on­ly set in the third, 8-11, a re­sult that re­duced the score­line to 2-1. How­ev­er, Fras­er then lift­ed her­self in the fi­nal set, where she pre­vailed 11-6, and there­by com­plet­ed a 3-1 T&T lead.

For­tunes did not fol­low the team, though, in the oth­er match­es, as Thong did not sur­vive a sin­gle set and was brushed aside in the team’s sec­ond sin­gles match, 3-0 (4-11, 3-11, and 3-11), by a vast­ly su­pe­ri­or An­gel­i­ca Arel­lano.

Hope rest­ed on the com­bi­na­tion of Fras­er and Thong in the dou­bles that fol­lowed, but even with Fras­er win­ning her team’s first match, the two­some were swept aside 3-0 (5-11, 9-11, and 3-11) by the Ecuado­ri­an pair of An­chun­dia and Arel­lano to en­sure that they led for the first time in the match.

Fras­er lat­er need­ed to beat Arel­lano for the T&T team to have a chance at a vic­to­ry, but in­stead Fras­er lost out to her coun­ter­parts in straight sets 4-11, 9-11, and 10-12 to hand the South Amer­i­cans an unas­sail­able ad­van­tage of 3-1, with Thong still ex­pect­ed to face An­chun­dia in an­oth­er match.

In the group, the T&T team went down to Colom­bia 3-1 and tri­umphed over Mex­i­co by the same mar­gin on Tues­day.

Mean­while, in triathlon, Kaya Rank­ine fin­ished way down the or­der at po­si­tion 26th in the fi­nal of the women’s triathlon at the San Jose Beach in En­car­na­cion City. The swim/bike/run event got go­ing at 2:45 pm yes­ter­day with a to­tal of 32 com­peti­tors; how­ev­er, Rank­ine dropped down the or­der ear­ly and even­tu­al­ly crossed the fin­ish line af­ter an hour, 12 min­utes, and 58 sec­onds.

Nao­mi Ruff of the Unit­ed States clinched the win by com­ing in just short of an hour at 59 min­utes and 49 sec­onds, with Cana­da’s Syd­ney Clement se­cur­ing the run­ner-up sil­ver medal at an hour and six sec­onds, while Ju­lia Vis­gueiro of Brazil sealed the third-place bronze medal af­ter an hour and eight sec­onds.

The trio of Maria Lopez of Mex­i­co, Rafael Capo of Chile, and Regi­na Michel of Mex­i­co ce­ment­ed the top six po­si­tions in times of 1:00.45, 1:01.23, and 1:01.34.