For­mer T&T ath­lete Alvin Daniel has com­mend­ed 2026 World Ath­let­ics In­door Cham­pi­onships 400-me­tre bronze medal­list and fel­low Point Fortin ath­lete Jereem Richards on his con­sis­ten­cy and per­se­ver­ance.

Daniel, 56, who claimed a sil­ver medal at the 1993 World In­door Cham­pi­onships in the men’s 4x400m re­lay along­side Dazel Jules, Neil de Sil­va, and Ian Mor­ris in Toron­to, Cana­da, and placed 15th over­all in the pre­lim­i­nary heats, was speak­ing on day two of the 2026 South­ern Games yes­ter­day at Skin­ner Park, San Fer­nan­do.

“I have to be re­al­ly proud of Jereem. Com­ing from Point Fortin al­so, he’s some­one that is com­ing up af­ter me, and he has been achiev­ing a lot,” Daniel said.

“He’s com­ing from the deep South and do­ing tremen­dous things for Trinidad and To­ba­go. Ever so of­ten, when­ev­er I get the op­por­tu­ni­ty, I al­ways send him a text, or some­times when I look at his races, I send him some point­ers.”

Fol­low­ing Sat­ur­day’s men’s 400-me­tre fi­nal, Richards ex­pressed his ela­tion at be­ing able to se­cure the bronze, com­par­ing the feel­ing to win­ning the gold.

In a video post­ed on his In­sta­gram page, the 2022 World In­door cham­pi­on said, “This bronze medal for me is like a gold medal be­cause it was hard for me to find mo­ti­va­tion to­day to come out and do it.”

Richards, 32, went on to re­veal, “I did not plan on do­ing in­doors this year.

“I was train­ing re­al­ly well and ran fast in two events, and my train­ing part­ners were do­ing well al­so, so our coach said, ‘Maybe you should go.’ I kind of came in­to this cham­pi­onship with lit­tle to no mo­ti­va­tion be­cause a lot of peo­ple don’t talk about com­ing from such a long sea­son, win­ning a medal and com­ing from such a high and not maybe hav­ing to re­set, and I feel like I didn’t have enough time to re­set for this meet.”

Richards was re­fer­ring to his cap­ture of a sil­ver medal at the 2025 World Cham­pi­onships in Tokyo, Japan. That was his third over­all World Cham­pi­onships medal to go along with a 4x400 me­tre gold and an in­di­vid­ual 200 me­tre bronze in 2017 in Lon­don.

“My coach may not want to hear this, but I was kind of hap­py when I thought that I did not make it to the fi­nal be­cause I was just so men­tal­ly fa­tigued.

When I saw I made it to the fi­nal, I had to lock in. I spoke with my sports psy­chol­o­gist, I prayed with my mum, and I prayed with my wife, and I was like, ‘I am al­ready here. I got a sec­ond chance and made it to the fi­nal, and I might as well put my best foot for­ward.’ To fin­ish with a medal and a sea­son’s best, I still feel pret­ty good. Glo­ry to God.’

Daniel, a for­mer na­tion­al 400m cham­pi­on, who was one of the two ho­n­ourees at this year’s South­ern Games, which con­clud­ed yes­ter­day, em­pathised with Richards’ strug­gle.

“We need to un­der­stand it’s still ear­ly in the sea­son. Some ath­letes skip the in­door sea­son and wait for the out­door sea­son to come around. And that’s why I’m say­ing it’s a great achieve­ment that he could pull out some­thing like this. He is up there in the world; he’s on the podi­um most of the time, as you can see. He just has to tweak a few things here and there, and he’ll be great for the fu­ture.”

For­mer T&T cy­clist Leslie “Fast Legs” Rawl­ins, 71, who rep­re­sent­ed this coun­try at the 1976 Mon­tre­al Sum­mer Olympics, was al­so recog­nised at yes­ter­day’s con­clu­sion of the South­ern Games.