A sea­son's best time of 20.10 sec­onds put T&T's Jereem "The Dream" Richards in­to We­de­nes­day's men's 200 me­tres fi­nal at the Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan.

He is T&T's last hope for an in­di­vid­ual track medal and it will be against the lead­ing half-lap run­ners in the world in­clud­ing num­ber one-ranked Noah Lyles of the Unit­ed States, sec­ond-ranked An­dre de Grasse of Cana­da, who is the reign­ing 100m bronze medal­list, USA's Ken­neth Bednarek (No 5), Cana­di­an Aaron Brown (No 6), Amer­i­can Erriy­on Knight, Ja­maican Rasheed Dwyer and Joseph Fah­bulleh of Liberia.

The Point Fortin-born Richards, ranked ninth in the world, will run out in lane two in the medal race at the Olympic Sta­di­um at 8.55 am in the de­layed Tokyo Games.

Yes­ter­day (Tues­day), the 27-year-old reach the fi­nale af­ter his third-place fin­ish in the semi­fi­nal third of three heats when he lined up in lane five and fol­lowed to the line De Grasse, who made a late surge out in lane nine to beat the fast-mov­ing Bednarek in lane six, low­er­ing his coun­try's na­tion­al record to 19.73. The Amer­i­can was sec­ond in a time of 19.83.

This was af­ter Richards, who is part of T&T's 4x400m re­lay team, dom­i­nat­ed the field in heat two in round one in the ear­li­er ses­sion, to com­fort­ably ad­vance to the semi­fi­nals af­ter clock­ing 20.10, a sea­son-best tim­ing. He was chal­lenged close to the line by Shaun Maswan­ganyi (20.18) but man­aged to hold off the South African.

It was at this junc­ture that Kyle Greaux, T&T's oth­er run­ner in the 200m, un­for­tu­nate­ly, made his ex­it for a sec­ond straight Olympics. At Rio 2016 Games in Brazil, he placed 45th over­all with 20.61.

He was hop­ing to ad­vance as a non-au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fi­er from heat three of six, run­ning in lane three, but his time of 20.77 sec­onds placed him fourth, trail­ing Qatar's Fe­mi Ogun­ode (20.37), Turkey's Ramil Guliyev (20.54) and De Grasse (20.56), re­spec­tive­ly.

"Good things are of­ten birthed from ad­ver­si­ty. One who gains strength by over­com­ing ob­sta­cles pos­sess­es the on­ly strength which can over­come ad­ver­si­ty," said Greaux in a post on so­cial me­dia fol­low­ing the race. He placed 30th over­all, this time around.

Git­tens 10th best long jumper in the world

Mul­ti-sport ath­lete Tyra Git­tens was a 10th-place fin­ish­er in the women's long jump event on Tues­day.

The St Au­gus­tine-born jumper's best leap mea­sured 6.60m, her sec­ond ef­fort in a thrilling com­pe­ti­tion that fea­tured World Class ath­letes in­clud­ing even­tu­al gold medal­list Malai­ka Mi­ham­bo of Ger­many (7.00), the 2019 World cham­pi­on, Amer­i­can Brit­tney Reese (6.97m), the 2012 Lon­don win­ner and 2016 Rio sec­ond-place fin­ish­er, who copped the sil­ver medal and Niger­ian Ese Brume (6.97m), the bronze medal­list. Brume placed third at the 2019 World Cham­pi­onships.

Git­tens had the widest of smiles emerg­ing from the fi­nal­ists' tun­nel dur­ing the in­tro­duc­tion seg­ment, lift­ing her arm proud­ly en­joy­ing the mo­ment of reach­ing the fi­nal in her Olympic de­but. By the end of the in­tro cer­e­mo­ny, she was in­to com­pe­ti­tion mode as she was first up in the 12-ath­lete fi­nal.

The 23-year-old raced down the track and hit the sand at a dis­tance of 6.30m to be in eighth place af­ter the first round which Brume led with her huge ef­fort of 6.97.

Git­tens fol­lowed up with her fur­thest ef­fort (6.60m) but she dropped to the ninth spot af­ter Great Britain's Jazmin Sawyers, who fouled her open­ing ef­fort re­turned with a 6.80m-dis­tance.

The T&T long jumper was un­able to bet­ter her sec­ond dis­tance and stopped at 6.53m in her third leap, drop­ping one spot again af­ter Mary­na Bekh-Ro­manchuk (Ukraine) fi­nal­ly reg­is­tered a dis­tance (6.88) af­ter foul­ing her first two at­tempts to book her spot among the fi­nal eight jumpers, who get to go three more rounds in the race for the medals.

The was while the com­pe­ti­tion raged on among the top three jumpers as Reese matched the then leader's 6.97m to take the top po­si­tion as her next best ef­fort of 6.81 was bet­ter than Brume's 6.67. Mi­ham­bo, mean­while, trailed in third place with her sec­ond ef­fort of 6.95m.

In the medal rounds, the gold medal seemed like­ly to go to ei­ther Reese and Brume as Mi­ham­bo failed to reg­is­ter a dis­tance un­til the sixth and fi­nal round where pro­duced an amaz­ing sea­son's best 7.00m which nei­ther of the two pre­vi­ous lead­ers could sur­pass, gift­ing the Ger­man the gold.

T&T's Git­tens had pro­gressed to the fi­nal af­ter plac­ing fifth in Group A of the qual­i­fi­ca­tion round on Sat­ur­day. She 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 al­so had dis­tances of 6.12m in the first round and 6.34m, in the third.

Cy­clists hunt men's sprint medal

Lo­cal cy­clist Kwe­si Browne was sched­uled to take the track first at the Izu Velo­drome in the qual­i­fy­ing round of Men's Sprint from 3.30 am on Wednes­day morn­ing).

His coun­try­man Nicholas Paul, the World record-hold­er in the event, will be the 22nd cy­clist to race the clock in the 3.5-lap com­pe­ti­tion to be among the top 24 rid­ers who will qual­i­fy for the 1/32 Fi­nals.

Paul, 22, who set a fly­ing 200m world record of 9.100 sec­onds at the Elite Pan Amer­i­can Track Cy­cling Cham­pi­onship in Cochabam­ba in Bo­livia in 2019, eras­ing a sev­en-year-old record was held by France's Fran­cois Per­vis, will be mak­ing his de­but at the Olympics

So too is Browne, who is the 2014 Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) Games and 2016 Pan Amer­i­can Track Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships, bronze medal­lists.

Both Paul, the 2019 T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) and First Cit­i­zens Sports Foun­da­tion's "Sports­man of the Year", and Browne have been train­ing at the In­ter­na­tion­al Cy­cling Union (UCI)  World Cy­cling Cen­tre in Aigle, Switzer­land un­der Scot­tish coach Craig McLean

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