Clay­ton Clarke

T&T's dou­ble Olympic bronze medal­list Lalonde Gor­don will get his sec­ond taste of Di­a­mond League ac­tion when he lines up in the Sam­sung Di­a­mond League Memo­r­i­al Van Damme Meet in Brus­sels, Bel­gium to­mor­row. Gor­don will con­test the men's 400m and will hop­ing to im­prove on his sev­enth place fin­ish in his first Di­a­mond League race in Zurich, Switzer­land on Au­gust 23 in 45.62. The Low­lands-born run­ner won bronze in the Lon­don Olympics 400m fi­nals in a per­son­al best in 44.52 on Au­gust 5 and helped T&T's men's 4x400m re­lay team to bronze in a na­tion­al record of 2:59.40.

Gor­don will face Lon­don sil­ver medal­list Luguelin San­tos (Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic) and Bel­gium's Lon­don fi­nal­ists Kevin and Jonathan Bor­lee. Two-time Olympic 400m hur­dles cham­pi­on An­ge­lo Tay­lor (USA) is al­so in the line up. Kel­ly-Ann Bap­tiste will do bat­tle in the women's 200m. The 2011 World Cham­pi­onships women's 100m bronze medal­list will be con­test­ing her first half lap dash for the year. Bap­tiste held the na­tion­al record of 22.60 un­til this year when her fel­low To­bag­on­ian Se­moy Hack­ett im­proved the mark to 22.55 (twice) in May at the Lon­don Olympics semi­fi­nals. Bap­tiste will face women's 4x100m re­lay gold medal­list gold medal­ist and record hold­er Bian­ca Knight (USA), Olympic fi­nal­ist Myr­i­am Sour­mare of France, mul­ti­ple world ju­nior medal­list An­neisha McLaugh­lin (Ja­maica) and reign­ing Eu­ro­pean cham­pi­on Mariya Myre­myen (Ukraine).

Cleopa­tra Borel se­cured her first vic­to­ry on the Eu­ro­pean cir­cuit tak­ing the women's shot put at the 48th Palio Città del­la Quer­cia meet, in Rovere­to, Italy on Tues­day. Borel achieved her win in fine style toss­ing the iron ball out to a new sea­son's best of 18.82 to im­prove on the 18.71 she at­tain­ing in tak­ing sec­ond place in Pad­ua, Italy on Sun­day. Borel took the lead on her first throw with 18.06 and ex­tend­ed with on the next ef­fort (18.37) which was enough to win. Iri­na Tarso­va of Rus­sia was sec­ond with 18.33. Borel then stamped her au­thor­i­ty on the field with a last round throw of 18.82. Na­tal­lia Mikhnevich of Be­larus was third.

Borel is now 19th on the lat­est IAAF women's shot put per­for­mance list­ing.