Rachael Thom­spon-King

It was the pre­sen­ta­tion T&T had been wait­ing for since last year and on Wednes­day night, the 4x100 me­tres re­lay team of Richard Thomp­son, Ke­ston Bled­man, Em­manuel Cal­len­der and Marc Burns fi­nal­ly got to drape their sil­ver medals around their necks.

The quar­tet were the guests of Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona and wife Reema, who put on a grand af­fair at The An­chor­age in Ch­aguara­mas, in recog­ni­tion of the T&T del­e­ga­tion for the Olympic Games in Rio de Janiero, Brazil from Au­gust 5-21.

"I felt it must have a way to tell all those hard-work­ing ath­letes, we do ap­pre­ci­ate what you have been do­ing over the past three four years prepar­ing for that ul­ti­mate goal," said Pres­i­dent Car­mona in his ad­dress. "And what bet­ter way to do this than by hav­ing a send off, a blast even, to tell you all that we be­lieve in you all, we sup­port you all and we know you're go­ing to do what needs to be done."

The hand­some­ly dressed young men walked across the stage and right­ly col­lect­ed their medals from Pres­i­dent Car­mona and along the way were con­grat­u­lat­ed in­di­vid­u­al­ly by Min­is­ter of Sport Dar­ryl Smith and T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) pres­i­dent Bri­an Lewis.

All gave ad­dress­es, as well as chef de mis­sion Dr Ian Hy­po­lite, to a dis­tin­guished group gath­ered, which in­clud­ed T&T first ever Olympic gold medal­ist, Hase­ly Craw­ford, reign­ing Olympic javelin cham­pi­on Keshorn Wal­cott and a num­ber Rio-bound ath­letes like sprint­er Ron­dell Sor­ril­lo, shot-put­ter Cleopa­tra Borel, sailor An­drew Lewis and box­er Nigel Paul, to name a few.

In their speech­es they all praised the ath­letes for their work ethics, suc­cess­es and pledged sup­port for those, who will be head­ing off to the Olympics.

"We are grate­ful for this op­por­tu­ni­ty. We are grate­ful for the ac­knowl­edg­ment by his ex­cel­len­cy for putting on this event for us to ac­knowl­edge our hard work and every­thing that we put in­to this sport and this coun­try," said Thomp­son.

"For us to go from fourth to third then third to sec­ond is sort of a crazy turn of events but it feels so good when you per­form with in­tegri­ty, when you do the things the right way, you abide by the rules and don't take any short­cuts. Even­tu­al­ly you get what you de­serve."

His­to­ry will show that the T&T unit, who crossed fourth at the Lon­don Games, was twice up­grad­ed to earn the sil­ver medal. In 2012, the team moved from fourth to third af­ter Cana­di­an team of Justyn Warn­er, Garvin Smellie, Oluseyi Smith and Jared Con­naughton, run­ning the third leg and on the fi­nal turn, had tak­en a step on the lane line, au­to­mat­i­cal­ly dis­qual­i­fy­ing them.

Three years lat­er, news came that the en­tire US squad was stripped of its sil­ver medal as a re­sult of Tyson Gay's dop­ing case.

It was a bit­ter­sweet mo­ment for Bled­man, who had a close re­la­tion­ship with Gay.

"It feels good but it's kind of sad. Tyson was like a big broth­er to me, we use to ac­tu­al­ly train to­geth­er. It's sad that we took some­thing away from him, but I am hap­py be­cause it's an Olympic medal as I said he was like a big broth­er to me and he helped me with a lot of stuff so that's the sad part of it."

Cal­len­der, who nev­er strays from his be­liefs, thanked God and praised his team-mates.

"It feels good, but at the same time you would have want­ed to re­ceive it on the same day but God is good," said the sprint­er, who like Thomp­son and Bled­man will be par­tic­i­pat­ing in his third Olympic Games.

"I don't do noth­ing off my own strength but of God's, be­lieve it or not. Peo­ple think that we just go out there and do it just like that. There is a spir­i­tu­al side to it as well that you have to con­nect with God. We formed a team, the 4x100, not just by luck and chance but it's a kind of love and if you bring the vibes of God in­to any­thing you can be vic­to­ri­ous. We didn't gold but sil­ver is al­so be­ing vic­to­ri­ous."

Burns felt sim­i­lar­ly to for­mer team­mates, cher­ish­ing the mo­ment.

"Get­ting the sil­ver is a very ju­bi­lant feel­ing. At this point in time it feels kind of the same," said Burns, not re­al­ly mind­ing the four-year wait. "I am just hap­py to get the sil­ver.

It was a bit melan­choly for Burns, who will not be mak­ing the trip to Brazil, but was very sup­port­ive in the group that will be rep­re­sent­ing T&T.

"I did not qual­i­fy at the Na­tion­al Open Cham­pi­onships on the week­end but I want to wish the guys all the best. I know they will do us proud."

The evening in­clud­ed mu­si­cal per­for­mances by for­mer ca­lyp­so monarch Rod­er­ick "Chuck" Gor­don and so­ca artiste Nes­ta "Sekon Sta" Box­ill and the evening closed off with en­ter­tain­ment by the Pris­ons Band.