Reign­ing na­tion­al sprint cham­pi­on Leah Bertrand pow­ered her way in­to the women’s 100-me­ter semi­fi­nals on the first day of ath­let­ics at the Paris Olympics in France, on Friday while Michelle-Lee Ahye bowed out of the dash in round one.

Bertrand, in her first Olympic Games, lined up in heat six, run­ning from lane four, and she de­fied all her lack of ex­pe­ri­ence with a bril­liant and time­ly surge in the last 10 me­tres to claim third in a time of 11.27 sec­onds to au­to­mat­i­cal­ly progress to to­day’s (Sat­ur­day’s) semi­fi­nal round. 

“I was just so fo­cused on the race; I am re­al­ly ex­cit­ed that I was able to ex­e­cute my race. I got a good start and saw the two ladies on ei­ther side pulling away from me, so I knew I had to go with them to get that top three fin­ish, and it worked,” Bertrand elat­ed­ly told Guardian Me­dia Sports. 

Bertrand fol­lowed Amer­i­can Twan­isha Ter­ry (11.15) in lane five and Shashalee Forbes of Ja­maica (11.19) in lane three to progress as the three au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fiers to the next round.

“I am at a loss for words. I want­ed to qual­i­fy for the Olympics, and I want­ed to reach the semi­fi­nals, and I have done that. Now I can trust my­self, and I have to thank my coach, Joel Brown (Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty). He took his time to come here and en­sure I was ready for this, and I ap­pre­ci­ate that so much.”

Look­ing ahead to the semi­fi­nals, Bertrand said, “The fact that I made it to the semi­fi­nal means I want to make the fi­nal, but I know I will have to do my per­son­al best, but I be­lieve I have it in me and aim to give it my all,” said the 22-year-old, whose per­son­al best is 11.08.

Bertrand said she is now “just stay­ing fo­cused on what is ahead. I can do this!” 

Bertrand, who hails from Point Fortin like Machel Ce­de­nio and Jereem Richards, was quick to note: “I am from Point Fortin. We just seem to be able to pro­duce; I can’t say why oth­er than Point.” 

And while her biggest fans and great­est sup­port­ers are not in France but at home in T&T—her moth­er Kathy Kel­ly Sim­mons, twin broth­er Levi, and younger broth­er Lu­cas to­geth­er with grand­moth­er ‘Granny Kaths’—she said, “I know they were all up ear­ly watch­ing, prob­a­bly bawl­ing down the place but jump­ing up and re­al hap­py. They are my great­est sup­port­ers, and I love them so much.”

And to the peo­ple of T&T, Bertrand said, “Keep the sup­port, keep the love and pos­i­tive thoughts, and thank you, T&T.”

On Sat­ur­day, Bertrand will com­pete in the third and fi­nal semi­fi­nal heat, run­ning lane one at 2.09 pm (T&T time) against Ter­ry, the Czech Re­pub­lic’s Karoli­na Man­aso­va, New Zealand’s Zoe Hobbs, Daryl Nei­ta of Great Britain, Cana­di­an Au­drey Leduc, Ja­maican Tia Clay­ton, Gi­na Lueck­enkem­per of Ger­many, and Del­phine Nkansa of Bel­gium. The first two in each heat and the next two fastest ad­vance to the fi­nal card lat­er Sat­ur­day at 3.20 pm.

Ear­li­er, T&T’s lead­ing women’s sprint­er, Ahye, crossed fourth in heat two with a time of 11.33 and did not progress. 

“I have an in­jury that I had for a while to deal with now, a bunion on my right toe, so when I push and make the stride, it gets worse,” a limp­ing, shoe­less Ahye told Guardian Me­dia Sports, pain etched on her face, not from the in­jury to her right toe but rather at the dis­ap­point­ment of not mak­ing it in the semi­fi­nals.

Ahye, at her fourth Olympic Games, was in a dif­fi­cult heat two and ap­peared to be find­ing her best rhythm and stride at the end of the race but fin­ished fourth and not among the au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fiers. She wait­ed pa­tient­ly there­after in the wait­ing room to find out if she would be one of the three fastest losers. In the end, she was not. 

“Yes, my top end was good, but I did not get the best start, but the pain was a lot. I am hap­py to be okay af­ter the event, but sad I didn’t make it to the semi­fi­nals,” said a dis­ap­point­ed Ahye. 

On Fri­day, at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the Paris Olympics, Ahye had the ho­n­our of car­ry­ing the na­tion­al flag to­geth­er with swim­mer Dy­lan Carter.

“It feels great. I was very proud; it means a lot. Tru­ly an ho­n­our and in the rain,” said Ahye with a broad smile. “I was not ex­pect­ing it be­cause I had not been run­ning so well re­cent­ly, so this made me be­lieve they would not pick me, but when I found out, wow, that was spe­cial, and I said, Thank you.”

For now, Ahye is tak­ing it day by day. “When the time comes, I will de­cide what is next.” 

When asked whether that meant she was say­ing good­bye or re­tir­ing, Ahye shrugged it off and said with a cheeky smile, “I will know when that is.”

She will now fo­cus on next week’s 4x100-me­ter re­lays. 

“Things have been go­ing well; I re­quest­ed Ke­ston (Bled­man) to help us since the Ba­hamas be­cause of his ex­pe­ri­ence, and he just re­tired as an ath­lete. We are work­ing very well at the mo­ment and will con­tin­ue that way; we have a good team spir­it,” said Ahye.

Asked by Sports­Max TV re­porter Alex Jor­dan if she had any­thing to say to her peo­ple back home she replied, “Hon­est­ly, I have noth­ing to tell them, be­cause some of them haven’t been sup­port­ive to­wards us the ath­letes, and to the ones who have been sup­port­ing us, ‘Thank You’ we ap­pre­ci­ate the love and for the oth­ers, I re­al­ly have noth­ing to say.”

Al­so Sat­ur­day, Devin Au­gus­tine will be the lone sprint­er for T&T in the men’s ver­sion of the dash.

Round one of the men’s 100m will start at 5.50 am (T&T time). He will know which heat he will race from fol­low­ing the pre­lim­i­nary round at 4 am.