Clay­ton Clarke

T&T's first fe­male Olympian Lau­ra Pierre vis­it­ed To­ba­go where she met with To­ba­go's first Olympian Joseph God­dard at his Mt Irvine home on Tues­day. Pierre, who was on a one-week vis­it to T&T, com­pet­ed in the 1972 Olympics in Mu­nich, Ger­many where she con­test­ed the women's 200 me­tres ad­vanc­ing to the quar­ter­fi­nals. God­dard ran in the 1956 Games in Mel­bourne, Aus­tralia in the men's 100m and 200m events.

Pierre, a for­mer Abildene Track and Field Club mem­ber, al­so vis­it­ed Ed­mund Tur­ton, who was God­dard's team-mate in Aus­tralia. Tur­ton al­so ran in the sprint events. Pierre, who now re­sides in Seat­tle, USA, was one of the hon­orees of this year's South­ern Games which took place from March 25-27. The oth­er awardee was for­mer cy­clist, Lloyd Joseph. Both were hailed for their com­mit­ment and per­son­al con­tri­bu­tions to lo­cal sport. They were both pre­sent­ed with plaques by Min­is­ter of Sport Anil Roberts, in recog­ni­tion of their con­tin­u­ous sup­port to­ward sport­ing de­vel­op­ment in this coun­try.

The Ari­ma-born for­mer sprint­er al­so met with Hazel Tay­lor, moth­er of 2011 World Cham­pi­onships women's 100m bronze medal­list Kel­ly-Ann Bap­tiste, par­ents of Josanne Lu­cas-Durly and Juli­et Lu­cas and THA As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary for Ed­u­ca­tion, Youth Af­fairs and Sports Huey Cadette. The for­mer Ari­ma Gov­ern­ment pri­ma­ry school stu­dent was on hand to start the To­ba­go Pri­ma­ry Schools 3K fi­nals where she met and spoke with sev­er­al of the young­sters. Pierre re­turned to the US on Sun­day.