T&T’s last chance at a medal in the ath­let­ics seg­ment of the Paris Olympic Games in France was in the men’s 4x400 me­tres re­lay event, but in the end, an ear­ly mishap in the first leg run by Ren­ny Quow end­ed all hopes at the Stade de France on Fri­day.

“It was pret­ty good, apart from the tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ty with my spikes,” the 36-year-old Quow told Guardian Me­dia Sports as he raised his shoes to show they had come apart. 

“One of them came off when I was run­ning, and I had to run 200 me­ters bare­foot, and that hurt quite a lot, but com­ing out for my team is what it is about; it wasn’t for me, it was for my coun­try. 

The na­tion­al team of Quow, Jereem Richards, Jaden Marchan, and Sha­keem McK­ay, run­ning in that or­der, fin­ished eighth in a time of three min­utes and 06.73 sec­onds in semi­fi­nal heat one, won by Botswana in 2:57.76, with Great Britain in sec­ond (2:58.88) and the USA in third (2:59.15) to ad­vance as the au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fiers.

“I just keep do­ing this be­cause of the love and be­lief in my­self, the sup­port of my fam­i­ly, and God’s help. God has helped me to be where I am,” said Quow, ap­pear­ing in his sec­ond Olympic Games.

Richards ran the sec­ond leg, and af­ter the Quow mishap, he re­ceived the ba­ton some 10 me­ters be­hind the run­ner in sev­enth place, and while he tried to make up the dif­fer­ence, it was clear­ly a lost cause.

“It was not good, it was an un­der­whelm­ing per­for­mance, it wasn’t where we would like to be or where I thought we would have been. I def­i­nite­ly thought that based on the re­sults we had at World Re­lays, we had a bet­ter team this time around; we should have at least been two sec­onds faster than our 3.02; I was ex­pect­ing to be around the three-minute mark or 2.59; we were not there,” said Richards. 

“It just wasn’t there. We were out of it, and it is hard to put your­self in it when you are way out of it.”

First-time Olympian Marchan ran leg three, but it was in eighth po­si­tion through out be­fore he hand­ed it over to an­oth­er debu­tant at these Olympics in McK­ay.

“It def­i­nite­ly was not what we came out here to do, but the ex­pe­ri­ence, the train­ing, every­thing about it, ex­cept the per­for­mance, I would say, was amaz­ing. With the sup­port we got from train­ing camp, I know I am com­ing back bet­ter, and every­body on this team is com­ing back bet­ter,” said the 18-year-old.

“Every­one was so wel­com­ing. They treat­ed me open­ly; it was just an amaz­ing ex­pe­ri­ence and gave me fu­el. That is the worst that I could have had, and I know every­body here is dis­ap­point­ed. My aim is to come back next year in Tokyo and put T&T in a place where we are win­ners,” added Marchan.

McK­ay, who ran a lone­ly last leg in eighth place said, “This was not the re­sult we came here for. All-in-all, it is my first Olympics, so I am just thank­ful for the ex­pe­ri­ence and the op­por­tu­ni­ty to rep­re­sent T&T. I gave the best I could to­day, and so did the team. It was not the re­sult we came out for, but it is just a step­ping stone to great­ness in the fu­ture; we have to learn from it and move for­ward.

“I am a learn­er; I learn from my mis­takes; I look at films; I take ad­vice; and I am open-mind­ed to mak­ing changes to get bet­ter. It is good to have an open mind to progress,” added the 21-year-old. “My next goal is to qual­i­fy for in­di­vid­ual events now. I have not had an off-sea­son be­cause of  an in­jury so hope­ful­ly go­ing for­ward that can hap­pen so I can get a bet­ter op­por­tu­ni­ty to do that.”

On the young­sters in the re­lay team, Richards said, “It means a lot to have these drips of young tal­ent still drip­ping, but we need the pipe to have more wa­ter. We are the harsh­est crit­ics of our ath­letes at the Olympics and Worlds. Many of the younger gen­er­a­tion see these com­ments be­cause of so­cial me­dia, and un­less you are strong men­tal­ly, this could af­fect you.”

Richards al­so ad­dressed the words of en­cour­age­ment and sup­port from Prime Min­is­ter Dr. Kei­th Row­ley af­ter his valiant fourth-place fin­ish in the men’s 400m, where he lat­er put every­thing on the line on­ly to be edged out for bronze by.04 sec­onds.

“I ap­pre­ci­ate it. It was re­al­ly great to know that the hard work was no­ticed, even though I was not able to pro­duce some­thing tan­gi­ble. Thank you very much. I would kind­ly ask the Prime Min­is­ter, as much as he could, to sup­port the sport of track and field. As much as he could help de­vel­op the sport, please help us; we need it. Over the years, we have seen the demise and de­cline in track and field, and the same set of faces we see now one or two new ones,” said the Point Fortin-born ath­lete.

“Now is the time; we are host­ing the Carif­ta Games next year, and we need to do it in a big way to pro­mote our cul­ture and sports so that the youths can see op­por­tu­ni­ties in sport and get in­volved more. We have to show how sports can be mar­ketable and prof­itable. Be­cause of sports, I have a de­gree and I earn a liv­ing from run­ning.

“Thank you, Prime Min­is­ter, for notic­ing and ac­knowl­edg­ing. Please help sup­port more; even more, find dif­fer­ent ways, how­ev­er, he thinks he can help; please help,” said Richards. 

Men’s 4 x 400 m re­lay

Round 1

Heat 1

1. Botswana (Let­sile Tebo­go; Bu­sang Collen Ke­bi­nat­shipi; An­tho­ny Pe­sela; Bayapo Ndori), 2:57.76 (Q).

2. Britain (Samuel Rear­don; Matthew Hud­son-Smith; To­by Har­ries; Charles Dob­son), 2:58.88 (Q).

3. Unit­ed States (Quin­cy Wil­son; Ver­non Nor­wood; Bryce Dead­mon; Christo­pher Bai­ley), 2:59.15 (Q).

4. Japan (Yu­ki Joseph Naka­ji­ma; Kaito Kawa­ba­ta; Fu­ga Sato; Ken­taro Sato), 2:59.48 (q).

5. Zam­bia (Patrick Kakozi Nyambe; Kennedy Luchem­be; Chan­da Mu­len­ga; Muza­la Samukon­ga), 3:00.08 (q).

6. Ger­many (Jean Paul Bredau; Marc Koch; Manuel Sanders; Emil Agyekum), 3:00.29.

7. Poland (Maksy­mil­ian Szwed; Karol Za­lews­ki; Daniel Soltysi­ak; Ka­je­tan Duszyn­s­ki), 3:01.21.

8. Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ren­ny Quow; Jereem Richards; Jaden Marchan; Sha­keem Mc Kay), 3:06.73.

Sat­ur­dayy is the last chance for a medal for the twin is­land Re­pub­lic when Trinidad and To­ba­go’s cy­cling duo of Kwe­si Browne and Nicholas Lee Paul race in the Kierin pre­lim­i­nar­ies at 11.19 a.m. (TT time).

Both men were en­gaged in fi­nal train­ing prepa­ra­tion at the cy­cling velo­drome, with a fo­cus on bring­ing home a medal.

Browne, who did a per­son­al best time on Wednes­day in the match sprint qual­i­fi­ca­tion round of 9.73 sec­onds, is hap­py about that.

“Com­ing in­to the Games, the goal was just to get an­oth­er PB (per­son­al best), set­ting me up for the Kierin, and I think that is a good re­sult for me and a good time as well,” said Browne. 

Browne, who was train­ing lo­cal­ly un­til re­cent­ly head­ing off to the UCI camp in Switzer­land, not­ed, I spent two months in Switzer­land.” but most of the work was done back home. That 2 months in Switzer­land was me bring­ing the speed up, bring­ing the sharp­ness up; it just com­ple­ment­ed all the work I did back home, but it def­i­nite­ly helped me to work faster in train­ing,” added Browne. 

Browne ad­mit­ted his pref­er­ence: “The Kierin is my pre­ferred event, so hope­ful­ly every­thing comes in­to place Sat­ur­day and Sun­day.”

Browne is con­vey­ing the look of some­one who has a plan and fo­cus. “II know that I am close in speed to the oth­er guys that are here. So it is just to go out and ex­e­cute and trust my legs will bring me through on Sat­ur­day. “Note the wily Browne 

Paul ear­li­er said, “I have no pref­er­ence be­tween the match sprint and Kierin. The Kierin is a much more open race not about pure speed but tac­tics and judge­ment at the mo­ment.”

Browne will be first on the track on Sat­ur­day at around 11.28 am in Heat 4, along­side Kierin World Cham­pi­on Kevin Quin­tero, Is­rael’s Mikhail Yakovlev, Thai­land‘s Jai Angsuthab­saw­il, Nick Wammes of Cana­da, and Lu­ca Spiegel of Ger­many.

Paul is in Heat 5 at 11:32 a.m., and his five chal­lengers are Colom­bia’s Chris­tain Or­te­ga, Poland’s Rudyk Ma­teusz, Sam Dakin of New Zealand, Vasiljus Lendel of Lithua­nia, and Malaysia’s Muham­mad Sharon.

There are five Heats with the top two au­to­mat­i­cal­ly qual­i­fy­ing for Sun­day’s quar­ter fi­nals and all the losers go­ing in­to a reper­charge with a sec­ond op­por­tu­ni­ty to qual­i­fy for Sun­day’s quar­ter fi­nals .