JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Wednesday, March 19, 2025

No medals for T&T at World Champs

by

Andre E Baptiste, Doha, Qatar
1990 days ago
20191006
Grenada’s Anderson Peters sheds a tear after winning the men’s javelin throw gold medal at the World Championships in Doha, Qatar, on Sunday. He joined 400 metres specialist Kirani James as the only Grenadians to earn a Worlds title.

Grenada’s Anderson Peters sheds a tear after winning the men’s javelin throw gold medal at the World Championships in Doha, Qatar, on Sunday. He joined 400 metres specialist Kirani James as the only Grenadians to earn a Worlds title.

AP

On a day that promised a lot, in the end, noth­ing was de­liv­ered in terms of medals on Sun­day, mean­ing T&T’s track and field ath­letes left the Do­ha World Cham­pi­onships in Qatar with­out a sin­gle medal.

The men’s 4x400 me­tres re­lay team, the de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons, fin­ished fifth in a sea­son-best time of three min­utes and 00.74 sec­onds (3.00.74).

Run­ning from the dread­ed lane nine, Asa Gue­vara, Jereem Richards, De­on Lendore and Machel Ce­de­nio, in that or­der, strug­gled from the start and af­ter two legs were in fifth and de­spite their best ef­forts of all could not im­prove it.

Sun­day's fi­nal was even­tu­al­ly won by the USA in a world-lead­ing 2.53.69, with Ja­maica in sec­ond in 2.57.90 and Bel­gium third, al­so with 2.58.78.

Gue­vara ran the first leg. Af­ter­wards, he ad­mit­ted, “I tried my best run­ning blind in that leg and just want­ed to give it to Jereem with as best chance as pos­si­ble, it was very tough. All of this team en­cour­aged me and it was great to be part of the team with Jereem, De­on and Machel.”

De­spite the out­come, Richards was still proud of his team.

“We came here want­i­ng to de­fend our ti­tle but it was very, very dif­fi­cult com­ing across from lane nine and we were al­ways try­ing to catch-up com­ing across from so wide on lane nine,” said Richards.

“The team re­al­ly tried its best but it was not easy and we have to re­group and get our­selves ready for the Tokyo Olympics.”

Lendore added: “It was dis­ap­point­ing be­cause we were the de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons but the fact that we ran a sea­son-best shows every­one that we tried our best on the night but it was not good enough.”

The gen­er­al view of the team sug­gest­ed that there was a feel­ing that a greater pool of ath­letes is need­ed go­ing for­ward.

“If we can get a lot of the oth­ers back such as Ren­ny (Quow), Lalonde (Gor­don) and Dwight (St Hillaire) and oth­ers we will have a stronger pool and be able to rest some of the team,” not­ed a re­flec­tive Richards, to which Lendore agreed.

“We were al­ways play­ing catch up as you see, as the oth­er teams were able to rest guys and bring in fresh legs and that was im­por­tant so go­ing in­to next year, that pool will be im­por­tant at these events,” added Lendore.

T&T’s two-time Olympic javelin medal­list Keshorn Wal­cott was al­so un­able to break his medal drought at the Worlds.

The na­tion­al cham­pi­on placed 11th with his best mark mea­sur­ing 77.47 me­tres in an event won by Grena­da’s An­der­son Pe­ters, who got the gold with an 86.89m throw for his coun­try’s sec­ond-ever Worlds medal. Es­to­nia’s Mag­nus Kirt (86.21) was sec­ond and Ger­many’s Jo­hannes Vet­ter (85.37) third.

Af­ter­wards, Wal­cott said, “It just was not a good day, one of those things. I was con­cen­trat­ing on my run-up with my an­kle still both­er­ing me and well, it just did not come to­geth­er. I can­not re­al­ly ex­plain what hap­pened, my coach seems to feel I was rush­ing it but in the end, it was not to be.

“This is the end of the sea­son for me and it has been a fun­ny one with all my train­ing. I hope to just rest my an­kle, I do not be­lieve I need an op­er­a­tion but will be aim­ing to con­tin­ue next year look­ing for­ward to the Olympics.”

2019 IAAF World Championships


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored