Gyasi Mer­rique

T&T sprint­er Jereem Richards has ad­vanced to Thurs­day's men's 400 me­tres fi­nal at the World Ath­let­ics Cham­pi­onships in Tokyo, Japan as one of the two fastest losers out of the three se­mi-fi­nal heats.

While on­ly the top two from each heat ad­vanced au­to­mat­i­cal­ly to the fi­nal, Richards placed third in se­mi-fi­nal heat two, record­ing a sea­son's best of 44.12 sec­onds.

The win­ner of that race was Botswana's Bu­sang Ke­bi­nat­shipi in a top 10 all-time clock­ing of 43.61 sec­onds. Ja­maica's Rusheen Mc­don­ald se­cured the oth­er au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fy­ing spot plac­ing sec­ond in 44.04.

Richards had to wait un­til the com­ple­tion of heat three to con­firm a lane in the fi­nal.

An­oth­er Botswanan, Bayapo Ndori won heat three in 44.21 while Japan's Yu­ki Naka­ji­ma placed sec­ond in 44.60.

That meant Richards heat pro­duced both "fastest losers" berths to the fi­nal with Amer­i­can Ja­co­ry Pat­ter­son able to se­cure fourth spot in that heat, fin­ish­ing in 44.19 sec­onds.

From heat one, South African Za­kithi Nene qual­i­fied au­to­mat­i­cal­ly as that heat's win­ner in 44.20 sec­onds. Botswana's Lee Ep­pie placed sec­ond in 44.51 sec­onds to al­so ad­vance au­to­mat­i­cal­ly to the fi­nal.

While Richards had to qual­i­fy via the out­side route, his se­mi-fi­nal time was the third fastest in the round.