CLAY­TON CLARKE

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

T&T's Do­ri­an Alexan­der fine-tuned his prepa­ra­tions for the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) Games by win­ning gold at the Asian-Pa­cif­ic Mas­ters Games in Jeon­buk, South Ko­rea in May.

The 39-year-old copped the top spot in the men's 40 plus 68kg cat­e­go­ry af­ter de­feat­ing South Ko­re­an Bo­hun Seo in the fi­nal. He al­so over­came Chi­na's Jun­yi Li in the semi­fi­nal round.

Alexan­der along with Daniel Dasent-Thomp­son will rep­re­sent T&T in taek­won­do at the CAC Games. The Taek­won­do com­pe­ti­tion will be held from Ju­ly 4-7 in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic. The CAC Games are tak­ing place in El Sal­vador, how­ev­er, taek­won­do, along with six oth­er sport­ing dis­ci­plines (hock­ey, shoot­ing, eques­tri­an, ca­noe­ing, rac­quet ball, mod­ern pen­tathlon), will be held in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic.

The Ari­ma res­i­dent said the com­pe­ti­tion in South Ko­rea as­sist­ed him in get­ting sharp for the CAC com­pe­ti­tion. He cap­tured bronze in the Un­der 68kg di­vi­sion the 2010 and 2014 CAC Games.

"The pur­pose of go­ing to the Asian-Pa­cif­ic Mas­ters Games was to have a good out­ing at the com­pe­ti­tion and have a good re­sult and helped me pre­pare for the up­com­ing CAC Games. My last two CAC Games I have at­tend­ed, I have been able to bring home a bronze medal for T&T, be­ing on the medal po­si­tion and this will be a three-peat of me do­ing that over 16 year pe­ri­od," said the St Mary's Col­lege grad­u­ate who added he spent the two weeks of train­ing pri­or to com­pet­ing.

"I stayed and trained with a group called the TKD Co-op which is a group of adult taek­won­do prac­ti­tion­ers in Ko­rea where I was able to live, breathe and eat taek­won­do."

Alexan­der, who at­tend­ed New­town Boys' Ro­man Catholic Pri­ma­ry School, told Guardian Me­dia he is re­al­ly aim­ing to give a good show­ing at the CAC Games which he ex­pects to be his last time at the meet.

"At 39 years of age is not the same as train­ing and com­pet­ing as when you were 16 or 25. You have to put a dif­fer­ent fo­cus on both your ath­let­ic per­for­mance and your re­cov­ery and your strength and build on your dif­fer­ent dis­ci­plines and tech­niques re­lat­ed to your game."

He is bal­anc­ing his love for taek­won­do with job as a med­ical doc­tor based in New York, USA.

"I have been liv­ing and work­ing here (in NewYork) as a doc­tor in emer­gency and crit­i­cal care since 2010. As a re­sult I have to bal­ance my time work­ing as a physi­cian and train­ing taek­won­do. So this par­tic­u­lar trip to Ko­rea was es­pe­cial­ly im­por­tant to me and this up­com­ing CAC Games be­cause I have tak­en a fo­cus break on work specif­i­cal­ly so that I can train and per­form at my best and the best show­ing for T&T at the CAC Games," said Alexan­der.