Row­er Dr Fe­lice Aisha Chow will open  T&T’s par­tic­i­pa­tion at the long-await­ed Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan on Thurs­day.

The 2020 Games, which was de­layed due to the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic, will of­fi­cial­ly be­gin on Fri­day with the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny at Tokyo’s Olympic Sta­di­um from 7 am (T&T time).

Chow will com­pete in heat two of the women’s sin­gle sculls against five oth­er row­ers in­clud­ing Kath­leen No­ble of Ugan­da, An­neta Kyri­dou (Greece), Joan Poh (Sin­ga­pore), Sani­ta Pus­pure (Ire­land) and Ke­nia Lechuga (Mex­i­co) at 8.40 pm (T&T time) at the Sea For­est Wa­ter­way.

The 44-year-old T&T row­er will race out of lane three and will use her phys­i­cal fit­ness, tech­nique and speed to be among the top three fin­ish­ers, who will be au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fiers to progress to the quar­ter­fi­nals set for Fri­day. The re­main­ing row­ers will com­pete in repechage for a sec­ond chance at ad­vanc­ing to the next round. The semi­fi­nals are card­ed for Sat­ur­day with the medal race ear­ly next week.

The lo­cal row­er, who is be­ing coached by Sarah Tro­bridge, is the first Olympic par­tic­i­pant in row­ing for T&T. She made her de­but at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games and placed 22nd over­all. This af­ter, the 2019 Pan Amer­i­can sin­gles sculls sil­ver medal­list fin­ished fourth in the ‘D’ fi­nal post­ing with a time of sev­en min­utes and 50.23 sec­onds.

Next in ac­tion for the red, white and black will be sailor An­drew Lewis on Sat­ur­day night.

Lewis, who is fea­tur­ing at his third Olympic Games, sails in­to ac­tion in the men’s laser event at Ka­maku­ra from 11 pm (T&T time). He will com­pete in a se­ries of races (10) and points in each race are award­ed ac­cord­ing to po­si­tion: the win­ner gets one point, the sec­ond-placed fin­ish­er scores two and so on. The fi­nal race is called the medal race, for which points are dou­bled. Fol­low­ing the medal race, the sailor with the fewest to­tal points is de­clared the win­ner.

Lewis, who rep­re­sent­ed T&T at the 2012 Lon­don and 2016 Rio Games, will seek out the top spots in races one and two in the morn­ing ses­sion and lat­er in races three and four in the evening ses­sion.

On Sun­day, two more T&T ath­letes will take on the best ath­letes in the world in their re­spec­tive sport.

They are, the re­spec­tive First Cit­i­zens Sports Foun­da­tion and T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee’s (TTOC) “Sports­woman and Sports­man of the Year”, cy­clist Te­niel Camp­bell and swim­mer Dy­lan Carter.

Camp­bell, the first T&T women’s cy­clist to qual­i­fy for the Olympics, will have this coun­try’s first chance at a medal when she tack­les the road race at 12 am at the Fu­ji In­ter­na­tion­al Speed­way.

Carter, com­pet­ing at his sec­ond Olympics, will dive in­to ac­tion in the men’s 100 me­tres freestyle with the heats start­ing at 7.19 am at the Tokyo Aquat­ics Cen­tre.