It was a tough day on the track for T&T quar­ter-mil­ers De­on Lendore, Machel Ce­de­nio and Dwight St Hillaire at the Toyko Olympic Games in Japan on Mon­day as none of them pro­gressed to the fi­nal of the men's 400 me­tres event at the Olympic Sta­di­um.

Lendore came the clos­est to ad­vanc­ing to the medal race as one of the fastest losers up to the sec­ond semi­fi­nal, un­til the third and fi­nal heat when Isaac Mak­wala of Botswana placed third with a 44.59-clock­ing to book the eighth and fi­nal spot in the fi­nale.

Rac­ing in the fastest of the three semi­fi­nal heats, Lendore run­ning out of lane sev­en crossed fourth in a time of 44.93 sec­onds be­hind wor­thy op­po­nents, who record­ed per­son­al achieve­ments.

Grena­di­an Ki­rani James, the 2012 Lon­don Olympic cham­pi­on, won the heat in a sea­son's best 43.88 and sec­ond-placed An­tho­ny Zam­bra­no of Colom­bia ran an Area record of 43.93 sec­onds, both ad­vanc­ing as au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fiers while Liemar­vin Boneva­cia (The Nether­lands) achieved a na­tion­al record with 44.62 in plac­ing third and moved on as one of the fastest losers.

Ce­de­nio was next in semi­fi­nal two and the na­tion­al 400m record-hold­er, rac­ing out of lane nine placed sixth in 45.86 sec­onds.

Ahead of his race Ce­de­nio had said: "The Olympic taught me as an ath­lete, 'the heart of a cham­pi­on' you go out and com­pete and give it your all."

He did, in a tough lane nine as­sign­ment, af­ter he start­ed strong but com­ing around the fi­nal bend, al­though known for his fast fin­ish­es, could not close the gap opened by the race even­tu­al win­ner Michael Cher­ry of the Unit­ed States who clocked 44.44 sec­onds with the oth­er au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fi­er be­ing Ja­maican Christo­pher Tay­lor, who fin­ished sec­ond be­hind a sea­son-best of 44.92.

In semi­fi­nal three, St Hillaire, who ran out of lane two, placed sev­enth with a time of 45.58 sec­onds in the half-lap sprint that was won by Ba­hami­an Steven Gar­diner, who record­ed a sea­son's best of 44.14. Amer­i­can Michael Nor­man se­cured the sec­ond spot with 44.52 sec­onds and Mak­wala crossed in third place. De­fend­ing 400m Olympic cham­pi­on (2016 Rio Games) Wayde Van Niek­erk of South Africa fin­ished a dis­ap­point­ing fifth af­ter he clocked 45.14 sec­onds.

The T&T trio will at­tempt to put their one-lap dis­ap­point­ments be­hind them and re­fo­cus on the men's 4x400m re­lay with the qual­i­fy­ing heats sched­uled for Fri­day from 7.25 am.

Both Lendore, Ce­de­nio were mem­bers of the 2019 IAAF (World Ath­let­ics) World Re­lays 4x400m cham­pi­on team.

Wal­cott chas­es an­oth­er Olympic medal

Two-time Olympic javelin medal­list Keshorn Wal­cott will take cen­tre stage on Tues­day when he lines up for his qual­i­fi­ca­tion round (Group A/B) of the men's javelin com­pe­ti­tion from 9.05 pm.

Wal­cott, T&T's first-ever field event gold medal­list at an Olympic Games, en­ters the virus-de­layed Tokyo Games as this coun­try's best hope of win­ning a medal.

The 28-year-old cre­at­ed his­to­ry when he won gold at the 2012 Lon­don Olympics, be­com­ing the first Caribbean men's ath­lete as well as the first ath­lete of African de­scent, to win the javelin event in the his­to­ry of the Olympics. The then 19-year-old, un­der the guid­ance of coach Is­mael Lopez Mas­tra­pa, threw the iron-spear 84.58m for his first Olympic medal and T&T’s sec­ond-ever Olympic gold medal.

Four years lat­er, at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games in Brazil, Wal­cott gave T&T more to cel­e­brate by bag­ging a bronze medal with an 85.38m per­for­mance.

Lead­ing up to the Tokyo Olympics, which was post­poned by a year due to the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic, he thrived on the Eu­ro­pean cir­cuit and in his fi­nal three meets ahead of the start of the Games, earned three medals.

At the Kuor­tane Games on June 26, Wal­cott won sil­ver with a sea­son-best 89.12m. Three days lat­er, he copped an­oth­er sil­ver with a dis­tance of 85.16m at the Spitzen Le­ich­tath­lek meet at Sta­dion Al­i­men in Luzern and closed off at the fi­nal Di­a­mond League meet be­fore the Games, the Muller British Grand Prix at the In­ter­na­tion­al Sta­di­um in Gateshead with an 82.81m-throw for a bronze.

Wal­cott, a for­mer Carif­ta Games, North Amer­i­can, Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (NACAC) and Olympic cham­pi­on, en­ters with a per­son­al best of 90.16m and will again have sup­port and be guid­ed by coach Mas­tra­pa.

Sprint­ers Richards, Greaux, Git­tens hunt

Mon­day night, T&T had three ath­letes in ac­tion.

Sprint­ers Jereem “The Dream” Richards and Kyle Greaux were to be on track in the men’s 200m aim­ing to be among the first three across the line and if not be among the next fastest three to en­sure pro­gres­sion to to­day's semi­fi­nal round.

Richards, the 2018 Com­mon­wealth men's 200m cham­pi­on, was set to race in heat two from lane three against Taymir Bur­nett of the Nether­lands, Cameroon's Es­eme Em­manuel, Ab­dul Hakim Sani Brown of the hosts coun­try Japan, Shaun Maswan­ganyi (South Africa), Jan Volko (Slo­va­kia), Bernar­do Baloyes (Colom­bia) and Jan Kr­ka (Czech Re­pub­lic).

Lat­er in heat three, Greaux was to be chal­lenged by reign­ing men's 100m bronze medal­list An­dre De Grasse of Cana­da, the 2017 World Cham­pi­onship gold medal­list Ramil Guliyev (Turkey), Japan's Jun Ya­mashita, Fe­mi Ogun­ode (Qatar), Sibu­si­sio Mat­sen­jwa (Eswa­ti­ni) and Brazil­ian Aldemir Ju­nior.

Richards, 27, with a sea­son’s best of 20.13 sec­onds and a per­son­al best of 19.97 and Greaux, 33, with a sea­son-best 20.70 and per­son­al best of 19.97 sec­onds, main goals are to reach the semi­fi­nals which are set for this morn­ing from 7.50 am (T&T time).

Tyra Git­tens, in her Olympic de­but, was seek­ing to reach the podi­um in the women's long jump fi­nal.

The 23-year-old, who placed fifth in Group A of the qual­i­fi­ca­tion round on Sat­ur­day, record­ed a 6.72m-leap in the sec­ond round to ad­vance as one of the best per­form­ers, hav­ing nar­row­ly missed out on reach­ing the au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fy­ing mark of 6.75m.

The Texas A&M stu­dent's first-round ef­fort mea­sured 6.12m and in the third round, land­ed 6.34m, com­pet­ing in a group that had eight par­tic­i­pants reach the 12-ath­lete fi­nal.

The fi­nal­ists, she was sched­uled to com­pete against were au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fiers from Group A Amer­i­cans Brit­tney Reese and Tara Davis who ad­vanced with 6.86m and 6.85m ef­forts, re­spec­tive­ly, Swe­den's Khad­di Sag­nia (6.86m) and Abi­gail Irozu­ru of Great Britain with a sea­son's best 6.75m.

The oth­ers who pro­gressed as best per­form­ers from the group, Mary­na Bekh-Ro­manchuk of Ukraine (6.71m), Jazmin Sawyers of Great Britain (6.62m) and Aus­tralian Brooke Strat­ton (6.60m).

And from Group B, Ser­bia's Ivana Spanovic, who ad­vanced with a huge sea­son's best 7.00m, Ger­many's Malai­ka Mi­ham­bo, al­so with a sea­son-best 6.95m, IVB's Chantel Mal­one (6.82) and Niger­ian Ese Brume (6.76).

Paul, Browne make Olympic de­but in men's sprint

Cy­clists Nicholas Paul, the 2019 T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) and First Cit­i­zens Sports Foun­da­tion's "Sports­man of the Year", and Kwe­si Browne will al­so make their Olympic de­but when they race in­to ac­tion in the men's sprint on Wednes­day at the Izu Velo­drome in Shizuo­ka.

Paul, the World record-hold­er, and Browne have been in in­tense train­ing at the In­ter­na­tion­al Cy­cling Union (UCI)  World Cy­cling Cen­tre in Aigle, Switzer­land un­der the watch­ful eye of Scot­tish coach Craig McLean and will be putting all their prepa­ra­tion in­to ef­fect against the best in the world in the qual­i­fy­ing round start­ing from 3.35 am.

Paul set a fly­ing 200 me­tres world record of 9.100 sec­onds at the Elite Pan Amer­i­can Track Cy­cling Cham­pi­onship in Cochabam­ba in Bo­livia in 2019. This record was held by France's Fran­cois Per­vis for sev­en years.

The 22-year-old has been rep­re­sent­ing T&T out­stand­ing­ly since 2016, win­ning the Kilo­me­tre Ju­nior Na­tion­al Track Cham­pi­onship Sprint and a year lat­er, won the Sprint at the Na­tion­al Track Cham­pi­onship and was sec­ond in the Team Sprint along with Browne and Njisane Phillip.

Both Paul and Browne will al­so com­pete in the men’s keirin event

Browne won the bronze medal in the event at the 2014 Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) Games in Ve­r­acruz, Mex­i­co and al­so at the Pan Amer­i­can Track Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships in 2016 in the Mex­i­can city, Aguas­calientes.