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.”