CLAY­TON CLARKE

Sport Cor­re­spon­dent

Sha­keem McK­ay is ded­i­cat­ing his call-up for the up­com­ing Paris Olympic Games to the John John, Laven­tille com­mu­ni­ty.

McK­ay is among the 17 ath­letes who will rep­re­sent T&T at the 30th Olympics Games set for Paris, France from Ju­ly 26 to Au­gust 11. The 21-year-old was named a mem­ber of T&T’s men’s 4x400 me­tres re­lay team af­ter he fin­ished third in the men’s 400m fi­nals at the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) Na­tion­al Ju­nior and Se­nior Track and Field Cham­pi­onships at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo, Port-of-Spain on June 29. For­mer World In­door cham­pi­on Jereem Richards was first in 44.72 sec­onds ahead of 18-year-old Jaden Marchan (46.30) and McK­ay (46.62).

McK­ay is hop­ing his ac­com­plish­ment will in­spire the res­i­dents to great­ness.

“It is very im­por­tant that I con­tin­ue to rep­re­sent my com­mu­ni­ty and my peo­ple of John John, Laven­tille as I strive to be a bea­con of hope for the younger ones and even those my age and old­er,” said the New­town Boys RC and Queen’s Roy­al Col­lege grad­u­ate.

McK­ay wants to show the pos­i­tive side of his home town, say­ing: “I want every­one to see that we are just as tal­ent­ed and in some cas­es even more tal­ent­ed than a lot of peo­ple and could re­al­ly do things if we cap­i­tal­ize on the right op­por­tu­ni­ties.

“The stereo­types of my com­mu­ni­ties like mine cause us to have less op­por­tu­ni­ties than oth­ers, but I’m en­cour­ag­ing my peo­ple to come out and seek op­por­tu­ni­ties since it would hard­ly ever be giv­en to us.”

The Abi­lene Wild­cats quar­ter­mil­er is hav­ing his best year as she set a per­son­al best of 46.39 sec­onds at the South East­ern Con­fer­ence (SEC) Out­door Cham­pi­onships in Gainesville, Flori­da on May 10. The Louisiana State Uni­ver­si­ty (LSU) stu­dent al­so sped to a new 200m (20.97) the pre­vi­ous day.

He helped T&T’s (4x400m) mile re­lay side to book its tick­et for Paris run­ning the an­chor leg in the sec­ond qual­i­fi­er round at the World Re­lays in the Ba­hamas on May 6 to fin­ish sec­ond in the third and fi­nal heat in 3:02.39. Richards, Asa Guev­era, and Che Lara were the oth­er mem­bers of the lo­cal line-up.

The na­tion­al quar­tet missed out on qual­i­fy­ing the pre­vi­ous day as McK­ay, Richards and Tim­o­thy Fred­er­ick were third in their heat.

With the 4x400m squad head­ing to the French cap­i­tal, McK­ay’s task then was to en­sure he fin­ished among the top four at the Na­tion­al Cham­pi­onships to make his Olympic de­but and that he did so on June 29.

When McK­ay saw his name among the 17 an­nounced by the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee press re­lease on Sat­ur­day (Ju­ly 6) he was grate­ful to God.

“Af­ter hear­ing the news, I just got down on my knees thank­ing God for mak­ing this all pos­si­ble be­cause with what I’ve been through this sea­son, it’s lit­er­al­ly on­ly him that pulled me through to make it to Paris.”

McK­ay has been a mem­ber of the men’s se­nior 4x400m since 2022 while still a ju­nior. At 19 years old, he ran the sec­ond leg on the na­tion­al squad which fin­ished fifth in the fi­nals at the World Out­door Cham­pi­onships in Eu­gene, Ore­gon, USA. One year lat­er at the 2023 World Out­door Cham­pi­onships in Bu­dapest, Hun­gary, now 20 years, he again was in ac­tion for T&T in the 4x400m pre­lim­i­nary round.

He al­so com­pet­ed at the 2021 and 2022 World Un­der-20 Cham­pi­onships in the 200m.

How­ev­er, McK­ay said noth­ing com­pares to Olympic se­lec­tion.

“As a track and field ath­lete who wants to com­pete at the biggest stages, Of course com­pet­ing at the Olympics this year was the ma­jor goal for this year. This is the pin­na­cle for most track and field ath­letes.”

He told Guardian Me­dia he is hum­bled by his maid­en Olympic se­lec­tion.

“I am tak­ing it just like every oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion I have been to. It is the same com­peti­tors from oth­er com­pe­ti­tions and the goal re­mains the same. Yes, the name of the com­pe­ti­tion might be dif­fer­ent but the mind­set re­mains the same. We want to give our best and most like­ly fin­ish on the podi­um.”

Fol­low­ing his third-place fin­ish at the Na­tion­al Cham­pi­onships he has re­turned to his LSU train­ing base to con­tin­ue his prepa­ra­tion for Paris.

“I am gear­ing to­wards Paris, my main fo­cus would be to re­main healthy and con­tin­ue to man­age my train­ing prepa­ra­tions with my coach­es in a way that I avoid any feel­ing of burnout due to the lengthy col­lege sea­son I had.”