An­dre Bap­tiste

George Bovell's per­for­mances yes­ter­day has ig­nit­ed op­ti­mism in the T&T camp. Sev­er­al of our ath­letes are tired of liv­ing in the shad­ows of their Caribbean coun­ter­parts, Ja­maica, and Bovell's cool de­meanour as he qual­i­fied for to­day's fi­nal, was cer­tain­ly in­spi­ra­tional. On the verge of the track and field which starts to­day, I met with Dex­ter Voi­son, our ath­let­ic man­ag­er here in Lon­don, to find out how much Bovell's per­for­mance has done to in­spire the rest of the con­tin­gent. Voi­son looked mea­sured and re­laxed. "There is a qui­et mood of op­ti­mism in this team and George on­ly helped to fu­el that at­mop­shere. We at­tend­ed the Pre Olympic Games in Wales over two weeks ago and when we did our de­brief, we dis­cov­ered it was one of our bet­ter camps. The ath­letes and the tech­ni­cal staff all felt the same way. Clear­ly our ob­jec­tives were met. The ath­letes bond­ed well.

The se­niors, Kel­ly Ann (Bap­tiste), Richard (Thomp­son), Marc (Burns) and the younger ath­letes were all great. It was al­so the first time we were able to get our ath­letes to do re­lay prac­tice be­fore their in­di­vid­ual event, and that was a plus for us at the camp." Con­cerns about sprint­er Ke­ston Bled­man were played down as Voisin said Bled­man would be ready to take his place in his events. "The of­fi­cial re­port I had from Ke­ston's han­dler, Lance Brau­man, is that he had a cramp while in the blocks at a re­cent meet. He at­tend­ed the camp and went through his paces. He al­so trained with the re­lay team. From what I am see­ing, he is fit." With the re­lays a week away, Voisin said the high­ly favoured T&T team is work­ing on pass­ing the ba­ton and gen­er­al run­ning. "So far the guys have been prac­tic­ing with Richard Thomp­son as the lead off to Marc Burns to Ron­del Sor­ri­lo with Ke­ston Bled­man as the an­chor. A de­ci­sion will have to be made as we go through the dif­fer­ent rounds. Whether we will use Cal­len­der in the se­mi fi­nals is yet to be de­cid­ed."

Kel­ly Ann Bap­tiste, who won a bronze medal in the World Cham­pi­onships in the 100 me­tres, will be on the track to­day and Voi­son said Kel­ly Ann has been work­ing with the med­ical team. "She has been mov­ing around with some dis­com­fort since June when we went to Ba­hamas to qual­i­fy for the women's re­lay. She has been get­ting treat­ment on a reg­u­lar ba­sis." Voi­son de­scribed the Olympic Vil­lage as mas­sive. "The sleep­ing ac­com­mo­da­tion is very dif­fer­ent from Bei­jing. We are a bit cramped in terms of space. The rooms are small but every­body has set­tled in. We can­not com­plain be­cause all the oth­er ath­letes are sleep­ing in the same rooms," added Voisin.