Act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er yes­ter­day con­grat­u­lat­ed Lalonde Gor­don and de­scribed his bronze medal suc­cess at the Olympic Games as a shin­ing ex­am­ple of hard work and ded­i­ca­tion. He said that the achieve­ment proved that hard work had its re­wards: "It is my hope that his win will be an in­spi­ra­tion to our youths who are in need of pos­i­tive role mod­els." Gor­don cap­tured bronze in the men's 400 me­tres event and clocked his per­son­al best of 44.52 sec­onds, the sec­ond time he broke his per­son­al record in as many days. "On be­half of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, the Gov­ern­ment and peo­ple of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go, I wish not on­ly to con­grat­u­late Lalonde for dis­tin­guish­ing him­self in his field but to thank him for bring­ing ho­n­our to our coun­try and for en­sur­ing that Lon­don 2012 is a mem­o­rable Olympic meet for Trin­bag­o­ni­ans every­where," said Warn­er.

Warn­er al­so com­mend­ed Njisane Phillips who placed fourth in the cy­cle sprint event: "It is the high­est achieve­ment of a lo­cal in the sport and in­deed our young cy­clist im­pressed the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty with his skills. I am sure we have on­ly seen a taste of what this young man is ca­pa­ble of." Warn­er not­ed that Je­hue Gor­don had po­si­tioned him­self among the top hur­dlers in the world with his sixth place fin­ish in the 400 me­tres hur­dle, just like Richard Thomp­son who placed 7th in the men's 100 me­tres fi­nals: "Je­hue has en­sured that we have es­tab­lished our pres­ence among the top ath­letes in his field." Warn­er said it was im­por­tant to show sup­port and en­cour­age­ment to the T&T ath­letes, par­tic­u­lar­ly the young ones so that they would con­tin­ue to chase gold, hope­ful­ly with greater suc­cess, af­ter Lon­don 2012 is over. He said he would be speak­ing with the Prime Min­is­ter and Min­is­ter of Sports, Anil Roberts, who would ad­vise on what trib­utes and wel­come plans the coun­try would of­fer.