T&T placed eighth in the men’s 4x400 me­tres re­lay fi­nal at the Tokyo Olympic Games in Japan on Sat­ur­day morn­ing (T&T time).

De­on Lendore, Jereem "The Dream" Richards, Dwight St Hillaire and Machel Ce­de­nio, run­ning in that or­der, clocked three min­utes and 00.85 sec­onds to fin­ish eighth, un­for­tu­nate­ly, in the fi­nal event to bring the cur­tain down on the ath­let­ics pro­gramme, mean­ing T&T ex­it­ed with­out a medal across all track and field events at the virus-de­layed Tokyo Olympics.

T&T en­tered with a re­vised race plan from round one when the lo­cal quar­tet, run­ning in the or­der of Lendore, Richards, Ce­de­nio, St Hillaire, placed third with a sea­son's best time of 2:58.33, a sea­son's best be­hind Amer­i­cans Trevor Stew­art, Ran­dolph Ross, Bryce Dead­mon and Ver­non Nor­wood, who al­so ran a sea­son-best 2:57.77 to win the first of two heats with Botswana's Isaac Mak­wala, Babolo­ki Thebe, Zibane Ngozi and Bayapo Ndori, in an African record of 2:58.33 in sec­ond.

The lo­cal 4x400m team, which ad­vanced with fourth-fastest time of the qual­i­fy­ing heats, switched the third and fourth legs from the round one heats, with St Hillaire, run­ning the third leg seemed to have felt some­thing on the back­stretch and fad­ed to the last place, end­ing T&T's chance at reach­ing the medal podi­um.

"Dwight would have felt a twinge around the 300-me­tre mark and those look­ing at the race would have seen him hob­ble a bit. He slowed some­what but was able to fin­ish his leg," team man­ag­er George Comis­siong told Guardian Me­dia Sports on Sat­ur­day, fol­low­ing the medal race. "He is cur­rent­ly hav­ing din­ner and would be at­tend­ed to by Dr Anyl Gopeesingh im­me­di­ate­ly there­after. We await the di­ag­no­sis."

Comis­siong added: "The team has tak­en the in­ci­dent in stride and rather than crit­i­cise the re­lay team have been very sup­port­ive. I am ex­treme­ly pleased with the team spir­it demon­strat­ed."

These Games make it the 12th time in Olympic his­to­ry that T&T track and field did not had an ath­lete on the medal podi­um. This is sim­i­lar to 1948, 1952, 1956, 1960, 1968, 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992 and 2004. De­spite that the dis­ci­pline has won 15 of the 19 medals that won in the 17th Olympic Games ap­pear­ances.

Rac­ing to the gold medal was the Unit­ed States with a rel­a­tive­ly en­tire new team which in­clud­ed Dead­mon, the lone run­ner from the first round, Michael Cher­ry, Michael Nor­man and Rai Ben­jamin with a sea­son's best time of 2:55.70, which was just shy of the Olympic record of 2:55:39, set by the USA in 2008 Bei­jing in Chi­na.

It was the Amer­i­cans first men's track gold medal. They were fol­lowed to the line by the Nether­lands quar­tet of Liemar­vin Boneva­cia, Ter­rence Agard, Tony van Diepen and Ram­sey An­gela with a na­tion­al record of 2:57.18 for the sil­ver medal, nar­row­ly ahead of Botswana (Mak­wala, Thebe, Ngozi and Ndori), who bet­tered their own African record with 2:57.27, for the bronze.

Run­ning in lane eight, Lendore was again quick out the blocks and had an ex­cel­lent sec­ond bend run to come in­to the first changeover in the third place to Richards, who was nar­row­ly be­hind Mak­walam who came through first ahead of Cher­ry.

Richards, the 200m Olympic fi­nal­ists got out fast and when the run­ners head­ed to the in­side line, he led most of the sec­ond leg un­til com­ing down the straight­way when he came un­der pres­sure and fad­ed, hand­ing over the ba­ton fifth to St Hillaire, T&T's oth­er 400m semi­fi­nal­ist.

St Hillaire sped off know­ing he had some work to do to catch up to the lead­ers. How­ev­er, he be­gan to hob­ble at 300m out and dropped to last place but he did not stop and man­aged to get the ba­ton around the track, limp­ing­ly to Ce­de­nio, an­oth­er T&T 400m semi­fi­nal­ist.

Ce­de­nio nev­er had a chance and could on­ly watch the rest of the field pull away to fin­ish ahead of him and his team, which al­so in­clud­ed re­lay mem­bers Asa Gue­vara and Che Lara, who were al­so in Tokyo.

Richards was a late ad­di­tion to the squad. The 2018 Com­mon­wealth 200m men’s cham­pi­on was al­ready on the team and rep­re­sent­ed T&T in the half-lap event. He be­came the sixth mem­ber of the 4x400m re­lay squad af­ter the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ics Ad­min­is­tra­tions of T&T (NAAATT) re­ceived per­mis­sion to add an­oth­er run­ner.

It was a dis­ap­point­ing end for the 4x400m men, who are the 2019 World Re­lays (Yoko­hama) and 2017 World Cham­pi­onships (Lon­don) cham­pi­ons, at the Olympics again, not bring­ing home a medal. In 2016 at the Rio de Janeiro Games in Brazil, T&T's re­lay team of Lendore, Ce­de­nio, Jar­rin Solomon and Lalonde Gor­don, was dis­qual­i­fied for a lane in­fringe­ment in the first round heats.

Paul, Browne still hunt­ing medals in keirin event

T&T's cy­cling duo Nicholas Paul and Kwe­si Browne are in­to the quar­ter-fi­nals in the men's keirin event as they con­tin­ue to chase T&T first medals at the Tokyo Olympics.

In the first round ear­ly Sat­ur­day morn­ing (T&T time) at the Izu Velo­drome, Paul, the world record-hold­er in the Fly­ing Start, pro­gressed af­ter oc­cu­py­ing the sec­ond spot in heat three be­hind Az­izul­has­ni Awang of Malaysia in the six-lap event to be the two au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fiers for the next round. The first two rid­ers qual­i­fy for the quar­ter-fi­nals while the re­main­ing rid­ers all oth­er rid­ers ad­vance to the repechage.

Browne was one of those rid­ers ad­vanc­ing to the repechage from heat one in round one af­ter fin­ish­ing third for a sec­ond chance at reach­ing the quar­ter­fi­nals. Win­ner Rayan Helal of France and sec­ond-place fin­ish­er Ger­man Max­im­i­lan Levy were the au­to-qual­i­fiers. De­fend­ing cham­pi­on and favourite in the event Great Britain Ja­son Ken­ny al­so fea­tured in the heat and he placed fourth, al­so qual­i­fy­ing for the repechage.

The T&T cy­clist made full use of his sec­ond chance, win­ning repechage heat one and was joined in the next round by Muham­mad Shah Fir­daus (MSF) Sahrom, who crossed sec­ond. Ken­ny won heat two and ad­vanced along with Ste­fan Bot­tich­er of Ger­many.

In the quar­ter-fi­nal round, 2019 Pan Amer­i­can Games men's sprint cham­pi­on, Paul, who is al­so the sixth-place fin­ish­er in the Olympic men's sprint, will face the starter in heat two on Sat­ur­day night at 9.29 pm (T&T time) against Levy, Sahrom, Jack Car­lin (Great Britain), Cal­lum Saun­ders (New Zealand) and Jair Tjon En Fa (Suri­name).

Browne will fol­low in heat three at 9.34 pm against a tough field which in­cludes Awang, Bot­tich­er, Matthew Glaet­zer (Aus­tralia), Yu­ta Waki­mo­to (Japan) and De­nis Dmitriev (ROC).

Ken­ny will race in heat one from 9.24 pm. The heat al­so in­cludes Helal, Matthew Richard­son (Aus­tralia), Yu­dai Nit­ta (Japan), Har­rie Lavrey­sen and Colom­bian Kevin Quin­tero, the 2019 Pan Amer­i­can Kerin gold medal­list.

The first four rid­ers in each quar­ter-fi­nal heat qual­i­fy for the semi­fi­nals lat­er Sat­ur­day from 10.09 pm (T&T time). The fi­nal is sched­uled for 12 mid­night.