Dr Cliff Bertrand

His­to­ry is made and de­fined by land­mark events. Be­cause of these events, our world nev­er would be the same. Such is the ad­vent of the Abilen­ian, De­on Lendore. Born Oc­to­ber, 28, 1992, to Chrispina Isaac of Mt Pleas­ant, Ari­ma, De­on is the last of three chil­dren. He has a broth­er Jevon and a sis­ter, Leah. He is the eye­ball of his grand­par­ents, Chris­tine Lendore and Car­men Isaac. His school­ing em­braced St There­sa's pre-school, run by Teacher Paula, Ari­ma Boys Gov­ern­ment and QRC. He is cur­rent­ly a busi­ness ma­jor at Texas A&M, Uni­ver­si­ty in USA. He start­ed his run­ning at Mt Pleas­ant Neigh­bour­hood Block Par­ty. He was dis­cov­ered by Mike Per­ry, par­ty or­gan­is­er, who claimed that De­on was too good to com­pete against his peers on the block, and that he should join a club to take him to the next lev­el of his game. His moth­er, Chrispina, a for­mer ath­lete com­pet­ing for Abi­lene Wild­cats in the 70s, in­tro­duced her son to her for­mer club. His world was nev­er go­ing to be the same. These events in his young life changed the di­rec­tion of his fo­cus. As des­tiny would have it, he was on the path to be Ari­ma's and Abi­lene Wild­cats' first Olympic Medal­ist.

Ari­ma has pro­duced more than 16 Olympians, but none like De­on Lendore. I called him on the night of his se­lec­tion to the Olympic team and said to him, "Go get it, you are the cho­sen one." He is de­vel­op­ing. A col­lege de­gree and not "The Pros" should be his pri­or­i­ty. Fi­nan­cial in­cen­tive will be tempt­ing, but short-lived. This is an im­por­tant step in the de­ci­sion-mak­ing process for him.

There's no mys­tery. If you are in col­lege, grad­u­ate! If you are not, ride the "elite" train! T&T took bronze in the 4x400m re­lay, con­tribut­ing to an­oth­er suc­cess­ful night for the Caribbean at the 30th Olympiad in Lon­don. It's his­to­ry. No T&T team has ever ac­com­plished this feat. Gor­don, Solomon, Al­leyne-Forte and Lendore com­bined for 2:59.40, NR (T&F News). Gor­don said: "Every­body brought their best game." Lendore added: "We had to run our best to medal." Their splits in the fi­nal: Gor­don-44.6; Solomon-44.6; Al­lyene–Forte-45.51; Lendore-44.73.

"The world may be sur­prised, but as a team, watch­ing our own per­for­mances through­out the year, we knew we would have giv­en strong com­pe­ti­tion and take a medal." The team broke in­to the elite ranks of Olympians when they fin­ished third. Lendore, the young man from Abi­lene Wild­cats Ari­ma, with the "Wolf pack," in­stant­ly scribed their names in­to Olympic his­to­ry, and in T&T's track mytholo­gies. To­day, his rel­a­tives are still beam­ing in the qui­et hilly Mt Pleas­ant com­mu­ni­ty of Ari­ma at their home. Sev­en­ty-sev­en-year-old Chris­tine Lendore, grand­moth­er, in a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion said: "I just could not be­lieve that I was watch­ing my grand­son on TV run­ning." His moth­er, Chrispina, said: "Cliff, all I could do was cry, as I nev­er could be­lieve what I just saw. My son an­chor­ing the team to a medal?" Sis­ter Leah said: "I was pray­ing all the time, Thank you, Je­sus! My lit­tle broth­er, an Olympic medal­ist?" Abi­lene Wild­cats' coach, Char­lie Joseph said: "He was su­per. I can't say it any bet­ter. He did ex­treme­ly well, we are proud of him. Now, we need the velo­drome to train."