T&T's sprint­er Michelle-Lee Ahye put all dis­trac­tions of the past two years be­hind her and re­turned to the track on Fri­day to place third in the women's 200 me­tres at the West Coast Re­lays in Fres­no, Cal­i­for­nia, USA.

She opened up her sea­son with a time of  23.47 sec­onds to fin­ish be­hind the Uni­ver­si­ty of New Mex­i­co's Tian­na Holmes (23.22) and Boise State's Ani­ta Taviore (23.25) in heat five, the fastest in as many heats in the timed fi­nals.

Ahye served out her two-year sus­pen­sion af­ter a where­abouts vi­o­la­tion, which start­ed on April 19, 2019 and end­ed on April 18, 2021, some three months ahead of the start of the Tokyo Olympic Games in Japan. The pre­mier sport­ing event is sched­uled to take place from Ju­ly 23 to Au­gust 8.

Ahye was pe­nalised for miss­ing three drug tests on June 23, 2018, Feb­ru­ary 23, 2019 and April 19, 2019.

The post­pone­ment of the Olympics Games by one year due to the on­go­ing coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic worked in favour of Ahye be­cause if the Games had gone ahead as planned last year, the T&T sprint­er would have been un­able to com­pete.

Ahye now has the op­por­tu­ni­ty to qual­i­fy for the Olympics and she made a great start on the week­end.