T&T's 400 me­tres hur­dler Je­hue Gor­don has not been en­tered to take part in the event at the IAAF World Cham­pi­onships in Daegu, South Ko­rea. A re­lease from the NAAA yes­ter­day said Gor­don's omis­sion was an over­sight for the Games which are sched­uled to be­gin on Sat­ur­day. Sec­re­tary of the NAAA Al­lan Ba­boolal who is with the team in South Ko­rea, de­scribed Gor­don's sit­u­a­tion as an over­sight and stat­ed that he will take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the mis­take. Up to late yes­ter­day, NAAA pres­i­dent Ephraim Ser­rette, Olympic gold medal­ist Hase­ly Craw­ford, to­geth­er with NACAC area rep­re­sen­ta­tive Neville Mc Cook were meet­ing with the di­rec­tor of the com­pe­ti­tion bu­reau for the IAAF World Cham­pi­onships, Jun Kim, to dis­cuss the pos­si­bil­i­ty of Gor­don's en­try.

The NAAA re­lease said they were hope­ful for a pos­i­tive out­come. Con­tact­ed Sports Min­is­ter Anil Roberts said he could not be­lieve what he was hear­ing. When the NAAA re­lease was read to him, the Min­is­ter's re­sponse was: "It has to be April 1st. This is an April Fools joke. That can­not be truth I can­not be­lieve what you just read. It can­not be true." Min­is­ter Roberts said there was a clear process for en­tries at in­ter­na­tion­al events and in par­tic­u­lar at a World Cham­pi­onship: "The team coach and man­ag­er will fill out the en­try form, dou­ble check it and then pass it on to the gen­er­al coun­cil and then the sec­re­tary will for­ward it to the rel­e­vant body. Je­hue was fourth at the last Cham­pi­onships at 17 years and was one of our main hopes for a gold medal in Daegu. I can­not un­der­stand or con­tem­plate this cat­a­stro­phe. How this hap­pened is un­be­lie­ve­able. I can­not fath­om it."

The Min­is­ter said he would be in­ter­est­ed in the out­come and was look­ing for­ward to hear­ing from the NAAA as to how this ma­te­ri­alised. Gor­don was ex­pect­ed to be the youngest fi­nal­ist and com­peti­tor in the event this year. Two years ago, he was fourth in the fi­nals in Berlin with a time of 48.26 sec­onds. He was 17 years and 276 days. At the Na­tion­al Cham­pi­onships two weeks ago, Gor­don cruised to vic­to­ry and lat­er re­vealed that he was anx­ious­ly look­ing for­ward to his ex­pe­ri­ence in South Ko­rea, where he was ex­pect­ing to im­prove on his fourth plac­ing at the last Games.