Clay­ton Clarke

T&T's Men's 4x100m re­lay team earned the bronze medal on the penul­ti­mate day of the 13th IAAF World Ju­nior Track and Field Cham­pi­onships in Monc­ton, Cana­da yes­ter­day. The quar­tet of Ja­mal James, Sabi­an Cox, Mori­ba Morain and Sher­mund All­sop com­bined to clock 39.72 sec­onds and se­cure T&T's sec­ond medal fol­low­ing Je­hue Gor­don's gold­en run in the 400m Hur­dles on Fri­day night. The USA took the gold in 38.93 sec­onds ahead of Ja­maica (39.55) with the 100m cham­pi­on Dex­ter Lee on an­chor. The sprint re­lay bronze medal per­for­mance is an im­prove­ment on the team's sixth place in By­d­goszcz, Poland in 2008 and match­es the 2002 bronze won in Kingston, Ja­maica. T&T's time was a sea­son best, bet­ter­ing the 39.77 set by the same four in tak­ing the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) Ju­nior gold in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic ear­li­er this month.

With one day to go, T&T is at joint third in the medal stand­ings with one gold and one bronze. How­ev­er, T&T's ath­letes will be ab­sent from com­pe­ti­tion to­day as both the Women's and Men's 4x400m re­lay teams failed to ad­vance to the fi­nals. The women's team of Shaw­na Fer­min, Gabriela Cum­ber­batch, Jes­si­ca James and Aleena Brooks was fifth in first semi­fi­nal in three min­utes, 40.15 sec­onds, the 10th quick­est time over­all. The time was near­ly three sec­onds off the team's sea­son best set in plac­ing sec­ond at the Carif­ta Games in the Cay­man Is­lands in April. The Men's quar­tet of Kishorn Demp­ster, Kevin Hayne, Os­ei Al­lyeyne-Forte and De­on Lendore clocked 3:10.87 to fin­ish fourth in semi­fi­nal two and ninth over­all. In the Men's Triple Jump qual­i­fi­ca­tion, El­ton Wal­cott nar­row­ly missed on mak­ing the fi­nals. The 2009 World Youth fourth place fin­ish­er leaped to 15.48 me­ters to place sev­enth in the first qual­i­fy­ing group and 13th over­all. The top 12 ad­vanced to the fi­nals set for to­day. El­ton and his younger broth­er Kishorn are the first sib­lings to be on the same na­tion­al World Ju­nior team. Both were al­so on the T&T's 2009 World Youth squad.

Gor­don–I went for gold not time

Af­ter his out­stand­ing run over the last year, Je­hue Gor­don was the favourite for the gold in 400m Hur­dles at the World Ju­nior Cham­pi­onships. All start­ed with his re­mark­able fourth place fin­ish at the 2009 World Cham­pi­onships in Berlin, Ger­many, where he clocked 48.26 sec­onds. He missed out on the bronze medal by 0.03 sec­onds but be­came the sec­ond fastest ju­nior (Un­der 20) 400m hur­dler ever. The then 17-year-old beat the two-time World cham­pi­on and 2004 Olympic gold medal­list Fe­lix Sanchez of the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and the 37-year-old vet­er­an Ja­maican Dan­ny Mc Far­lane. Ear­li­er this year, he clocked 48.47 sec­onds, the fifth fastest time ever with on­ly the World Ju­nior Record hold­er Dan­ny Har­ris of the US (48.02, 48.11, 48.13) and Gor­don him­self quick­er.

Go­ing in­to the World Ju­nior Cham­pi­onships in Cana­da, Gor­don clocked the five top times in the world, all un­der 50 sec­onds, and said in a press con­fer­ence at the start of the games that he was aim­ing for fast times. How­ev­er, with the chang­ing weath­er con­di­tions in Monc­ton, the sixth form Queen Roy­al Col­lege stu­dent had to al­ter his plans. The Mem­phis Pi­o­neer ath­lete said af­ter his vic­to­ry on Fri­day night that his aim was to win the gold. "I would say things went as planned as I got the gold medal. I was not study­ing the time as much. I want­ed go out there and have a good race and to en­sure my steps were cor­rect­ly made through the whole race and at the end of it I got the gold." He was chal­lenged in the fi­nals by Takatoshi Abe of Japan, who record­ed the fastest times in the pre­lim­i­nar­ies and semi­fi­nals.

"I was bit sur­prised (by Abe) but I ex­pect­ed it as I slowed at the 200m mark." He thanked all who sup­port­ed him in his ef­forts. Now that he has won the gold, he is look­ing for­ward to tack­ling the World Ju­nior Record of 48.02 sec­onds which Har­ris set in tak­ing sil­ver at the 1984 Olympics in Los An­ge­les, USA. He is hop­ing in do­ing so lat­er this year in Eu­rope. "It will be on my mind once I have a good race." Gor­don's coach Dr Ian Hy­po­lite said he's hap­py that his charge has fi­nal­ly de­liv­ered. "I feel re­lieved that he fi­nal­ly got the job done. I sup­pose he had a lot pres­sure." Be­fore head­ing off the World Ju­niors, Hy­po­lite an­nounced that Gor­don has opt­ed to go pro­fes­sion­al in­stead of tak­ing up a US schol­ar­ship.