T&T men’s sprint re­lay team nar­row­ly missed out on a podi­um fin­ish at the San­ti­a­go 2023 Pan Amer­i­can Games which meant no more medals on the track for this coun­try at Chile’s Na­tion­al Sta­di­um, yes­ter­day.

The lo­cal quar­tet of Jerod El­cock, Ju­dah Tay­lor, Er­ic Har­ri­son Jr and Kyle Greaux, run­ning in that or­der, placed fourth with a time of 39.54 sec­onds.

Run­ning away with the gold medal was Brazil’s quar­tet of Ro­dri­go Do Nasci­men­to, Fe­lipe Bar­di, Erik Bar­bosa and Re­nan Cor­rea in a time of 38.68 sec­onds, fol­lowed by the Cuban team of Rey­nal­do Es­pinosa, Edel Amores, Yaniel Carreo and Shain­er Rengi­fo, the sil­ver medal­list with 39.26 and bronze medal­list, Ar­genti­na (Tomas Mondi­no, Bautista Dia­mante, Juan Ciampit­ti, Fran­co Flo­rio) with a sea­son’s best 39.48.

“It was a bit dis­ap­point­ing, pass­es weren’t the best, we just came up short in the end,” said El­cock. “So now it’s just to work and come back stronger next year.”

It was the sec­ond out­ing for Greaux for the evening af­ter he placed sixth in the men’s 200m fi­nal with 21.32 in a race won by Cor­rea with 20.37. In sec­ond place was the reign­ing Pan Am 100m cham­pi­on Jose Gon­za­lez of the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic with 20.56 and in third place, Nadale Buntin of St Kitts and Nevis with 20.79.

Sprint­er Re­yare Thomas in the women’s ver­sion of the race came up short as well on an­oth­er cold evening at the Na­tion­al Sta­di­um.

Com­pet­ing in her fourth race in three days, Thomas clocked 23.79, a tad slow­er than her qual­i­fy­ing time of 23.76, the day be­fore.

“I came around the turn and felt my ham­string a lit­tle bit so I kind of backed off and then with­in the straight it felt a lit­tle bet­ter so I just kept push­ing. I was good enough to get back in­to medal po­si­tion, but I’m hap­py that I fin­ished,” said Thomas.

The fi­nal was won by Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic’s Mar­ilei­dy Pauli­no, the reign­ing 400m world cham­pi­on and the Tokyo 2020 Olympic 400m sil­ver medal­list.

Pauli­no jumped out to a com­mand­ing lead on the straight­away and fin­ished com­fort­ably ahead of the field in 22.74, with Cuban Yu­nilei­dy Gar­cia, the cur­rent Pan Am women’s 100m cham­pi­on, plac­ing sec­ond with 23.33. In third place was Brazil’s Ana De Je­sus with 23.52.

Sprint­er Michelle-Lee Ahye bagged the lone medal in ath­let­ics, a bronze in the women’s 100m dash on Tues­day.

It was T&T’s fourth medal and sec­ond bronze. Cy­clist Nicholas Paul won gold and sil­ver in men’s sprint and keirin events, re­spec­tive­ly, and bronze from the men’s 3x3 bas­ket­ball team of Boyd twin broth­ers Ah­keel and Ah­keem, Mori­ba De Fre­itas, and Chike Au­gus­tine.

Hock­ey women

beat­en by Cu­ba

T&T’s hock­ey women fell short against Cu­ba in the first round of the clas­si­fi­ca­tion play­off match, los­ing 1-0, as their win­less streak con­tin­ued yes­ter­day at the Pan Amer­i­can Games in San­ti­a­go, Chile.

De­spite their best ef­forts, the lo­cal “Stick­women”, coached by for­mer se­nior men’s play­er Akim Tou­s­saint, was un­able to find the back of the net, re­sult­ing in the dis­heart­en­ing loss which means T&T will play for the sev­enth spot.

“It’s kind of a dis­ap­point­ing one be­cause this is the one we were re­al­ly fo­cussing on from the get-go. We know the crossover is the chance we had to win and we could have seen it. We locked a cou­ple of cir­cle pen­e­tra­tion, we got at least three short cor­ners and we just weren’t able to put them away,” said Tou­s­saint.

On a day that start­ed bright and sun­ny with a chilly breeze blow­ing across the turf at the Hock­ey Sports Cen­tre, the na­tion­al women’s hock­ey team got the first penal­ty cor­ner for the match and its first for the tour­na­ment in the sev­enth minute. How­ev­er, Alana Lewis’ ef­fort was saved by a de­fend­er.

It was the on­ly re­al ef­fort by ei­ther team in the open­ing pe­ri­od which re­mained score­less.

Af­ter a bar­ren first quar­ter, the Cubans start­ed on an at­tack­ing note. Cheila Dar­ius’ at­tempt in the 18th minute was saved by T&T goal­keep­er Petal Der­ry, the first of three saves she had in the clash. Three min­utes lat­er, Jen­nifer Mar­tinez came close to scor­ing Cu­ba’s open­ing goal but her shot came off the post thank­ful­ly for T&T.

But the Cubans did not let up and were re­ward­ed in the 28th minute when Mar­tinez con­vert­ed a penal­ty cor­ner which turned out to be the win­ner, to close the first half, 1-0.

Af­ter the change of ends, T&T fought hard to get the equalis­er, earn­ing back-to-back penal­ty cor­ners which saw the first by Lewis saved by a play­er and the oth­er, tak­en by Kay­la Brath­waite, missed the tar­get. The scores re­mained un­changed head­ing in­to the fourth quar­ter.

In that fi­nal pe­ri­od, it was one-way traf­fic as the Cubans tried to ex­tend their lead. They had four of their six penal­ty cor­ners in this ses­sion but they were ei­ther saved by Der­ry or her rigid de­fend­ers as the score stayed the same, re­sult­ing in the heart­break­ing loss for T&T, who had their full com­ple­ment of play­ers, not since the open­ing match against the Unit­ed States.

“Yeah, they are work­ing very hard with the med­ical staff to try to be at 100 per cent. And they all went out there to give as much min­utes as they could,” said Tou­s­saint. “So I’m proud of the girls for the ef­fort they put out to­day but still kind of gut­ted for the re­sult.”

It was a tough loss for the lo­cal “Stick­women” but they hope to bounce back against Mex­i­co, who they will meet to­mor­row in the sev­enth and eighth clas­si­fi­ca­tion play­off match. In yes­ter­day’s open­ing match, the Mex­i­cans were beat­en by Uruguay, 3-0.

“Mex­i­co, an­oth­er team from the CAC (Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean) re­gion who we have beat­en in the past so we are very op­ti­mistic about that re­sult but once we get all the girls again, back fit and ready for that game, we’re go­ing to give it our all to see if we can get a pos­i­tive re­sult out of that one,” said Tou­s­saint on his team, who is still seek­ing its first win at San­ti­a­go 2023, hav­ing been beat­en by USA (15-0), Uruguay (11-0) and Ar­genti­na (21-0) in the group stages.

The win­less men’s team is in the same po­si­tion and to­day will bat­tle Pe­ru for sev­enth place at 8.30 am (T&T time).

Roberts 30th af­ter day one

T&T golfer Christo­pher Roberts is in last place af­ter shoot­ing a round of 11-over 83 to open round one of the men’s in­di­vid­ual com­pe­ti­tion at the Prince of Wales Coun­try Club, yes­ter­day.

The open­ing round was in­ter­rupt­ed be­fore every golfer was off the course, but Roberts had fin­ished his 18 holes and was at the bot­tom among the 30 golfers.

Eti­enne Pa­p­ineau of Cana­da was the first-round leader af­ter shoot­ing a nine-un­der par 63, three strokes ahead of Paraguay’s Zan­ot­ti, Se­bas­t­ian Munoz of Colom­bia, and Amer­i­can Dy­lan Menante. The trio are tied for sec­ond place six-un­der 66.

Robin­son in Kayak B fi­nal

Nicholas Robin­son will con­test the B fi­nal in the men’s in­di­vid­ual kayak sprint (K1) 1,000 me­tres event to­mor­row.

Robin­son strug­gled through the rounds, nev­er con­test­ing the lead in ei­ther stage at La­gu­na Grande San Pe­dro de la Paz, yes­ter­day.

Drawn in lane sev­en in the heat two of the open­ing round, the T&T ca­noeist fell well be­hind to fin­ish sev­enth and last with four min­utes and 23.27 sec­onds. He was some 42.69 sec­onds back from win­ner Valentin Rossi of Ar­genti­na (3:40.58), who au­to­mat­i­cal­ly qual­i­fied for the A Fi­nal along with sec­ond-place fin­ish­er Amer­i­can Jonas Eck­er (3:42.45).

In Robin­son’s sec­ond chance at the medal stage, he did bet­ter in semi­fi­nal two but still fin­ished down the field, pad­dling his way to the fifth spot with 4:19.10, miss­ing out on the medal race. The top two fin­ish­ers in the heat, Cana­di­an Cameron Low (3:47.13) and Cu­ba’s Reyler Pat­ter­son (3:56.50) will go through to the fi­nal.

Robin­son will race out of lane sev­en again in the men’s K1 1,000m B fi­nal, the first event to­mor­row at 8 am (T&T time). His con­tenders and their semi­fi­nal times are Jose Jimenez (4:19.88) of the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Es­teven Hilda­go (4:00.75) of Pe­ru, Puer­to Ri­can Ed­dy Bar­ran­co (4:02.78), Miguel Va­len­cia (3:56.18) of Chile, Be­lize’s Ama­do Cruz (3:56.51) and Venezue­lan Ray Acu­na (3:56.53).