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Thursday, July 3, 2025

Ian Morris: T&T athletes did their best

by

Walter Alibey
1425 days ago
20210809
University of Kentucky senior Dwight St Hillaire

University of Kentucky senior Dwight St Hillaire

Courtesy University of Kentucky

"They tried." This is what Ian Mor­ris, a for­mer na­tion­al 400 me­tres run­ner had to say about the ef­forts of the T&T con­tin­gent at the just con­clud­ed Tokyo, Japan Olympic Games.

For the first time in more than 20 years, the T&T team re­turned home medal-less. At Sun­day's clos­ing cer­e­mo­ny ath­letes were seen wav­ing to the cam­eras, show­ing off the medals they won.

Mor­ris, who missed out on a bronze medal at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain when he slowed down and al­lowed Sam­son Ki­tur of Kenya to pip him on the tape for the bronze medal, is no stranger to the Olympics. The race was won by Amer­i­can Quin­cy Watts in 43.50 sec­onds.

The res­i­dent of Siparia is call­ing on the pub­lic to be un­der­stand­ing to­ward the ef­forts of the ath­letes and the team, say­ing: "Of course, it's heart-wrench­ing to me that Trinidad and To­ba­go will not be bring­ing back any medals. I feel that, but every­body tried. We can't say any­body did not try. They did what they could have done at the par­tic­u­lar time and on that par­tic­u­lar day. I don't think any­body would go out there and not try. I mean, we saw some lack­lus­tre per­for­mances, but that's what they could have done at that point in time."

The T&T team got quar­ter­fi­nal ap­pear­ances from cy­clist Nicholas Paul in the match-sprint event, as well as semi­fi­nal per­for­mances from Paul and his team­mate Kwe­si Browne in the keirin. Row­er Aisha Chow al­so pad­dled to the semi­fi­nal in the Women's Row­ing- Sin­gle Sculls, while sprint­er Michelle Lee Ahye missed out on a berth in the 100 me­tres Women's fi­nal by one-thou­sandth of a sec­ond.

Mean­while, the coun­try al­so saw sprint­er Jereem Richards fin­ished eighth in the men's 200 me­tres medal race, as well as the 4x400 me­tres re­lay team which was ham­pered by an in­jury to third-leg run­ner Dwight St Hillaire dur­ing the race.

Mor­ris, a for­mer na­tion­al cham­pi­on over the one-lap sprint told Guardian Me­dia Sports on Sun­day that: "Our per­for­mances were not that bad. It could have been much bet­ter than that and that's the most I can say. I will not go in­to depths with that."

While Mor­ris dis­missed con­cerns that Ahye should have been in the fi­nal af­ter the women's 100 me­tres semi­fi­nals af­ter be­ing edged out for a place among the fi­nal eight af­ter the of­fi­cials gave Great Britain's Daryll Nei­ta the nod over her be­cause she post­ed the same time in the semi­fi­nals at 11.00 flat but cam­era re­plays showed that the Eng­lish­woman was faster by one-thou­sandths of a sec­ond (Nei­ta 992 and Ahye 993).

Mor­ris whose na­tion­al record of 44.25 sec­onds stood for 24 years be­fore it was bro­ken at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil by coun­try­man Machel Ce­de­nio, who fin­ished fourth in the fi­nal in 44.01 sec­onds, came out in to­tal de­fence of Dwight St Hillaire, the in­jured 4x400 me­tre third-leg run­ner, whose in­jury led to T&T's last-place fin­ish for the quar­tet of De­on Lendore, Jereem Richards, St Hillaire and Machel Ce­de­nio in the fi­nal on Sat­ur­day.

St Hillaire has been the sub­ject of much crit­i­cism on so­cial me­dia, by many ques­tion­ing if he went in­to the fi­nal with the in­jury. How­ev­er, Mor­ris said: " No­body was ex­pect­ing any­thing like that to hap­pen, no­body. It's a young man and this is his first Olympic Games. I am look­ing at how he ran. Maybe he felt some­thing, but I am giv­ing him ku­dos for at least car­ry­ing the ba­ton to Ce­de­nio."

Guardian Me­dia Sports was re­li­ably in­formed on Sun­day by a per­son with knowl­edge of the in­jury to the ath­lete from with­in the T&T camp in Tokyo Japan that St Hillaire, 23, pulled his right ham­string mus­cle in­side the first 100 me­tres of his run af­ter his spike got mashed off by the run­ner who was just be­hind him but de­cid­ed to fin­ish the race as fast as he could in an ef­fort not to let down his team­mates, he ran a 46.8 split on the leg.

St Hillaire's team­mate Ce­de­nio, who ran the fi­nal leg of the race said on Twit­ter: "It takes heart to fin­ish a 400m leg of a re­lay while sus­tain­ing an in­jury dur­ing the race. Dwight has heart and de­ter­mi­na­tion. An in­jury is un­pre­dictable. We ap­plaud you Dwight." Richards wrote: "Dwight is a re­al fight­er. He got hurt in the mid­dle of the re­lay and could’ve stopped but didn’t. That is Heart Red heart, A true fight­er."

And sprint­er Jonathan Far­in­ha, a mem­ber of the T&T 4x100 me­tres re­lay team al­so wrote on his Twit­ter ac­count: "Foot­ballers does drop down on the field and get sub­sti­tut­ed, ath­letes can’t do the same but in­stead we try to sac­ri­fice our en­tire ca­reer to com­plete that one race for our team and we still get crit­i­cized…smh sport is un­pre­dictable track is un­for­giv­ing any­thing can hap­pen."


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