An­dre E Bap­tiste

From Do­ha, Qatar

On a bit­ter­ly hot and hu­mid Fri­day in Do­ha, young T&T jumper And­wuelle Wright start­ed slow­ly in the men's long jump event and was nev­er able to re­cov­er in the qual­i­fy­ing round on Fri­day at the IAAF World Cham­pi­onships in Do­ha, Qatar.

Wright was in group A which com­prised 13 ath­letes and jumped from po­si­tion 11 with the de­sire of mak­ing the qual­i­fy­ing dis­tance at 8.15m or be among the best 12 per­form­ers for a chance to com­pete this evening for a medal. But af­ter a first jump scratch, Wright next two dis­tances mea­sured 7.76m and 7.76m to place 17th over­all.

A clear­ly dis­ap­point­ed Wright said, "I do not know what went wrong on Fri­day. All our prepa­ra­tions were good and I was feel­ing good but some­how it just did not hap­pen. This is my first World Cham­pi­onships so I have to learn quick­ly, go back to train­ing and get my­self ready for Tokyo. This I will have to use to give me a dri­ve to im­prove.

"I have not spo­ken to my coach yet but I will talk with him and we will look at what hap­pened and can be done to im­prove all of this."

Asked if he was ner­vous, the na­tion­al record hold­er at 8.25m told Guardian Me­dia Sports that, "No I do not think so but I just did not get it go­ing. It is hard to un­der­stand but I am not go­ing to let this stop me from my goal of mak­ing my coun­try proud next year."

Cuban Juan Miguel Echevar­ria sent out a strong warn­ing ahead of the fi­nal with a first jump of 8.40m with none of the oth­er 11 qual­i­fiers get­ting pass the 8.15m- qual­i­fy­ing mark.

In ac­tion on Sat­ur­day at 9.30 am will be ver­sa­tile T&T's women's sprint­er Kel­ly-Ann Bap­tiste in the 100m heats.

Bap­tiste has a lik­ing for World Cham­pi­onships hav­ing won a bronze medal in the dash in 2011 in Daegu, South Ko­rea and then in 2015, win­ning bronze with the women's 4x100m re­lays in Bei­jing, Chi­na.

Bap­tiste was a close sec­ond with 11.22 sec­onds to the en­forced ab­sen­tee Michelle-Lee Ahye (11.18) in the Na­tion­al Cham­pi­onships which sug­gests she is round­ing in­to her best.