Re­yare Thomas and Kyle Greaux gave T&T two more chances for medals at the San­ti­a­go 2023 Pan Amer­i­can Games in Chile on Wednes­day.

On a cold, wet af­ter­noon at the Na­tion­al Sta­di­um, the duo qual­i­fied for the fi­nal in the re­spec­tive women’s and men’s 200 me­tres dash on Thurs­day.

A heavy down­pour came just as ath­let­ics were to be­gin ac­tion on day three.

How­ev­er, the con­di­tions did not af­fect Thomas, who run­ning in the out­side lane, booked her spot as an au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fi­er in the medal race af­ter clock­ing 23.76 sec­onds to place sec­ond in the first of two heats.

“My main goal for this round was just to go in as an au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fi­er in­to the fi­nal to have a good lane,” said Thomas who was com­fort­able com­pet­ing in lane eight. “I think it’s fun be­cause my curve is not 100 per cent so I think run­ning blind for me would re­al­ly help me ex­e­cute my bend for the 200m.”

The 35-year-old fin­ished as the run­ner-up be­hind Ana De Je­sus of Brazil in first place with 23.61 and ahead of Ce­cil­ia Tamayo of Mex­i­co with 23.79. It was the quick­er of the two semi­fi­nal heats as fourth-placed Aimara Nazareno of Ecuador (23.90) and fifth-placed An­tigua and Bar­bu­da’s La’nica Lock­er (23.94) pro­gressed as non-au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fiers.

The oth­er fi­nal­ists and qual­i­fy­ing times are Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic’s Mar­ilei­dy Pauli­no, the reign­ing 400m world cham­pi­on and the Tokyo 2020 Olympic 400m sil­ver medal­list, win­ner of heat two with 23.04, Ecuado­ri­an Gabriela Suarez (23.63) and reign­ing Pan Am 100m cham­pi­on Yu­nislei­dy Gar­cia of Cu­ba (23.96).

Thomas, who placed sixth in the 100m dash on Tues­day, ad­vanced with the fourth-fastest and is look­ing for­ward to to­day’s medal race but prefers to be in one of the out­er lanes

She said, “Any­thing oth­er than two and three, I could be on the out­side, I don’t mind be­ing on the out­side.”

Mean­while, Greaux lat­er came through to the fi­nal as a non-au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fi­er from heat two of three.

He placed third with a 21.27-clock­ing be­hind win­ner Car­los Pala­cios of Colom­bia win­ner (21.11) and Cana­da’s Cal­lum Robin­son (21.16).

“The con­di­tions, I mean all of us are fac­ing the con­di­tions, it’s a bit late in the sea­son, very cold, still try­ing to come out and rep­re­sent my coun­try,” said Greaux.

In the fi­nal he will face, Re­nan Cor­rea of Brazil (20.39), Pan Am sprint cham­pi­on Jose Gon­za­lez of the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic (20.81), St Kitts and Nevis’ Nadale Buntin (20.97) Pana­ma’s Alon­so Ed­ward (21.04), and Emanuel Archibald of Guyana, the cur­rent Pan Am 100m bronze medal­list.

Greaux’s next event is as part of the T&T 4x100m team along with Er­ic Har­ri­son Jr, Ju­dah Tay­lor, and Jerod El­cock, who will com­pete to­day at 5.25 pm (T&T time) in semi­fi­nal heat one of two against Paraguay, the Unit­ed States, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and Cu­ba.

“Look­ing for­ward to run­ning in the 4x100m to­mor­row (Thurs­day) please God,” said Greaux ahead of his oth­er as­sign­ment at San­ti­a­go 2023.

Thus far, T&T have won four medals—gold and sil­ver from cy­clist Nicholas Paul in men’s sprint and keirin, and bronze from the men’s 3x3 bas­ket­ball team of Boyd twin broth­ers Ah­keel and Ah­keem, Mori­ba De Fre­itas and Chike Au­gus­tine and sprint­er Michelle-Lee Ahye in the women’s 100m.

IN CA­NOE SPRINT

Nicholas Robin­son gets go­ing in the ca­noe sprint at La­gu­na Grande San Pe­dro de la Paz.

He pad­dles off out of lane sev­en of heat two of the men’s K1 1,000 me­tres at 8.10 am (T&T time) against Ed­dy Bar­ran­co of Puer­to Ri­co, Venezue­lan Ray Acu­na, Amer­i­can Jonas Eck­er, Cana­da’s Cameron Low, Brazil­ian Rober­to Maehler, and Valentin Rossi of Ar­genti­na.

Robin­son, who was the grand prize win­ner at the tenth Mar­itime Kayak race in May, placed sev­enth with a time of four min­utes and 16.64 sec­onds in the event at the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) Games in Ju­ly.

He will try to go faster when he com­petes out of lane sev­en aim­ing to be among the top fin­ish­ers to move on to the semi­fi­nals, two hours lat­er for a chance to bat­tle in the medal race on Sat­ur­day at 8.10 am (T&T time). The non-qual­i­fiers will com­pete in the B fi­nal ear­li­er at 8 am.

IN GOLF

Christo­pher Richards Jr tees off in round one of the men’s in­di­vid­ual com­pe­ti­tion among 30 golfers from 17 coun­tries.

The com­pe­ti­tion starts at 7 am (T&T time) and Richards will look to im­prove on his sixth-place fin­ish at the CAC Games where he shot a lev­el par 72 in the fourth and fi­nal round of the men’s golf tour­na­ment to fin­ish with a five over par 293.

In May, Richards won the 16-18 age-group ti­tle at the Davis Ju­nior Cup Open Tour­na­ment at the Pointe-a-Pierre golf club.

IN HOCK­EY

T&T men’s hock­ey team was un­lucky as they lost against Mex­i­co in round one of the clas­si­fi­ca­tion play­offs on penal­ties af­ter the match end­ed 3-3 in nor­mal time.

Play­ing at the Hock­ey Sports Cen­tre in a driz­zle which got heav­ier as the match pro­gressed on a cold af­ter­noon, T&T play­ers could not con­vert any of their penal­ties los­ing 2-0 af­ter the Mex­i­can play­ers scored two out of five and earned the right to play for fifth spot af­ter a six-goal thriller.

“This is one of the few games I can ful­ly praise the guys for the kind of ef­fort that they put in but al­so putting to­geth­er a full 60-minute game. We’ve been al­ways talk­ing about try­ing to get that con­sis­ten­cy,” said coach Dar­ren Cowies, fol­low­ing the dis­ap­point­ing loss.

“This was prob­a­bly one of our most dis­ci­plined and well-put-to­geth­er games. We stuck to our struc­ture. We changed the tac­tics when we need­ed to, I saw the guys de­fend­ed well in dif­fer­ent parts. We just need to get bet­ter again at our ba­sics.

T&T in­ter­na­tion­al Teague Mar­cano scored the open­ing goal of the match, con­vert­ing the first penal­ty cor­ner of the clash in the eighth minute. T&T held on to a 1-0 lead at the end of the first quar­ter al­so, thanks to sev­er­al saves from goal­keep­er An­drey Rocke.

How­ev­er, the Mex­i­cans won the sec­ond quar­ter, equal­is­ing in the 24th minute from a field goal off the stick of Er­ick Her­nan­dez.

A minute lat­er, Mar­cano had a chance to re­take the lead for the men in red, white and black but he could not breach Mex­i­co’s goal­keep­er Os­car Co­pa­do.

How­ev­er, the Mex­i­cans made good on their fi­nal chance sec­onds be­fore the half­time whis­tle. The first half end­ed 2-1 in Mex­i­co’s favour as Kevin Amador scored an­oth­er field goal in the 30th minute.

“Pos­si­bly two of their three goals were off of us giv­ing up pos­ses­sion, with easy bounc­ing balls com­ing to our fore­hands and we al­ways get pun­ished, when we do give up those lit­tle mis­takes,” said Cowie.

The sec­ond half saw a to­tal of three goals.

Mex­i­co’s one-goal lead stood up for most of the third quar­ter un­til T&T earned back-to-back penal­ty cor­ners in the 38th minute. Mar­cano’s first and sec­ond at­tempts were saved by keep­er Co­pa­do but the re­bound off the sec­ond try went to Tariq Mar­cano and he lev­elled the score 2-2.

Two min­utes lat­er, T&T earned an­oth­er penal­ty cor­ner and this time it was Mick­ell Pierre find­ing the back of the net from an­oth­er re­bound af­ter the Mex­i­can cus­to­di­an saved Teague’s ef­fort, once again.

T&T closed the third quar­ter ahead 3-2.

In the fourth quar­ter, the Mex­i­cans, pumped up by their sup­port­ers’ in­creas­ing chant: “Mex­i­co, Mex­i­co”, came out hunt­ing an equalis­er and they got it in the 53rd af­ter Her­nan­dez con­vert­ed a penal­ty cor­ner and made sure the match end­ed in a draw.

In the clos­ing sec­onds though, Teague got a chance to score the win­ner but it went wide of the goal as reg­u­la­tion time ex­pired.

Af­ter the fi­nal whis­tle of reg­u­la­tion time, both Mar­canos, Pierre and cap­tain Jor­dan Vieira took the penal­ties for T&T and missed.

Mean­while, cap­tain Luis Vil­le­gas, Her­nan­dez, Jorge Estra­da, An­dre Bene­dict, and Daniel Castil­lo were the re­spec­tive penal­ty tak­ers for Mex­i­co with the lat­ter hit­ting the win­ning shot, putting the ball over the T&T cus­to­di­an.

Vil­le­gas’s goal was dis­al­lowed af­ter re­view, and Her­nan­dez and Benedith’s at­tempts were saved while Estra­da was the oth­er play­er on tar­get.

“Right up to the last sec­onds, we got that chance to score and win the game,” said Cowie. “We put to­geth­er a full 60-minute game just not the ex­tra added-on time for the shootout. We didn’t re­al­ly fo­cus ex­cept for Rocke, he was re­al­ly bril­liant in that shootout.”

It is the fourth straight loss for the lo­cal “Stick­men”, who suf­fered loss­es to the USA (6-1), Brazil (2-1), and Cana­da (4-0) in the group stages. With sev­enth be­ing the best T&T can do, Cowie and his team will go all out against Pe­ru, who lost to Brazil, 8-1 in the oth­er clas­si­fi­ca­tion semi­fi­nal, yes­ter­day.

“As I men­tioned to the guys, sim­i­lar to the Cana­da game, af­ter we put to­geth­er a se­mi-good per­for­mance, we want to take a lot of pos­i­tives com­ing out of this game and go in­to Pe­ru as pos­i­tive as pos­si­ble and get a good re­sult,” said Cowie.

The teams meet in the sev­enth-eighth clas­si­fi­ca­tion play­off match to­mor­row at 8.30 pm. (T&T time).

To­day, the women’s team will chase its first win of the com­pe­ti­tion against Cu­ba at 10.45 am.

The lo­cal “Stick­women” en­ter the match with de­feats against USA (15-0), Uruguay (11-0), and 21-0 against Ar­genti­na to place fourth in group A.

The Cubans fin­ished third in group B with one point from a draw with Mex­i­co and had loss­es in their oth­er two re­sults, against Cana­da (7-1) and Chile (2-0).