T&T Olympian Jereem Richards re­ceived his Elite Ath­lete As­sis­tance Pro­gramme (EAAP) dis­burse­ment on Wednes­day, amount­ing to $250,000.

Richards, who is cur­rent­ly in Trinidad ahead of this week­end’s Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ics Ad­min­is­tra­tion (NAAA) se­nior cham­pi­onships, re­ceived his cheque from Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs, Bev­er­ly Reid Samuel.

The EAAP pro­vides di­rect fi­nan­cial sup­port to high-per­for­mance ath­letes rep­re­sent­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go in re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions, en­abling Richards and oth­ers to cov­er es­sen­tial train­ing ex­pens­es, trav­el costs, and oth­er crit­i­cal re­sources need­ed to com­pete at the sport’s high­est lev­el.

With the World Ath­let­ics Cham­pi­onships on the hori­zon from Sep­tem­ber 13-21 in Tokyo, Japan, Richards comes in­to this week­end’s na­tion­al cham­pi­onships on a surge in form af­ter a dom­i­nat­ing start to the sea­son. Af­ter open­ing his sea­son with a vic­to­ry in the men’s 300m at the Jim­my Carnes In­vi­ta­tion­al in Gainesville, Flori­da, USA on Jan­u­ary 10, the Point Fortin-born sprint­er clocked 45.35 sec­onds and placed 7th in the 400m on the first leg of the now-can­celled Grand Slam Track se­ries in Ja­maica (April 4-5). He claimed sil­ver in the 200m in 20.81.

He im­proved with a then-world-lead­ing time of 19.86 sec­onds in the 200m on the Mi­a­mi leg, win­ning that event in the process. Then on May 31 and June 1, stop in Philadel­phia, USA, Richards se­cured sil­ver in the men’s 200m in 20.34 sec­onds and bronze in the 400m in 45.05 sec­onds.

On Ju­ly 6, Richards fin­ished down the field in the half-lap, on­ly able to cross the fin­ish line in 6th at the Mona­co top Her­culis EBS Wan­da Di­a­mond League meet, reg­is­ter­ing a time of 20.34 sec­onds. He then fin­ished 5th in the men’s 400m at the same meet.

How­ev­er, on Ju­ly 15, he re­turned to win­ning ways in the men’s 400m event at the Spitzen Le­ich­tath­letik meet at the Sta­dion All­mend, Lucerne, Switzer­land, in 45.11 sec­onds.