“There may be times when we are pow­er­less to pre­vent in­jus­tice, but there must nev­er be a time when we fail to protest.” – Elie Wiesel.

On Sat­ur­day night (morn­ing here in T&T) at the Olympic Sta­di­um in Japan, T&T’s sport­ing ex­ploits at the resched­uled 2020 Tokyo Olympics, was hit with an­oth­er dis­ap­point­ment be­hind the news on Fri­day morn­ing that two ath­letes and a coach were housed in iso­la­tions af­ter re­ceiv­ing pos­i­tive COVID-19 tests.

Michelle-Lee Ahye, af­ter fin­ish­ing third in the sec­ond se­mi-fi­nal of the women’s 100 me­tres in a time of 11.00 sec­onds flat, a sea­son-best, found her­self out of the fi­nal af­ter Great Britain ath­lete Daryll Nei­ta, who fin­ished fourth in the third se­mi-fi­nal with a sim­i­lar time 11.00 sec­onds flat, got the nod for that fi­nal eighth po­si­tion, over the T&T sprint­er.

Qual­i­fi­ca­tion rules for the fi­nal read: "The First 2 in each heat (Q) and the next 2 fastest (q) ad­vance to the Fi­nal from the three se­mi-fi­nal Heats."

The of­fi­cial rea­son giv­en re­gard­ing Ahye and Nei­ta was that in the fi­nal analy­sis of the two times of the ath­letes, Nei­ta ac­tu­al time was 10.992 and Ahye's time was 10.993.

This as­sess­ment, a clos­er in­spec­tion of pre­ci­sion tim­ing rules, sug­gests it should be used for com­pet­ing ath­letes in the same race as Nei­ta’s race had a record­ed wind fac­tor des­ig­na­tion of +0.3, while Ahye’s race wind fac­tor was -0.2.

T&T's Chef De Mis­sion Lovie San­tana, who is head of the del­e­ga­tion, and with as­sis­tance from track and field team man­ag­er George Comis­siong lodged a protest seek­ing an­swers as to why Ahye was not in­clud­ed as they seek a prop­er hear­ing and jus­tice done. How­ev­er, they were giv­en the run around for over two hours by those in charge of ad­ju­di­cat­ing the track and field com­pe­ti­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to a source who was at the com­pe­ti­tion venue who spoke to Guardian Me­dia Sports on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty since the in­di­vid­ual was not au­tho­rised to speak on the mat­ter: "Ms San­tana fought tooth and nail to get a hear­ing try­ing to get in con­tact with every­one who she knew could help in the mat­ter. When she fi­nal­ly got a hear­ing, the race was done mean­ing that all her ef­forts were in vain."

What is more trou­bling, the source said was that the race took place with lane one emp­ty.

"That was very dis­ap­point­ing if the Olympics is all about fair­ness and par­tic­i­pa­tion then why run a lane emp­ty while a protest is in progress," said the source, adding that un­der dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances: "No 100 me­tres race would have tak­en place un­til the protest was heard a ful­ly ad­ju­di­cat­ed.”

The source al­so high­light­ed that sur­pris­ing­ly, that the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee's (TTOC) ef­fort was a so­lo af­fair as there were no one, no re­gion­al al­lies ei­ther to help T&T in its protest ef­fort.

Mean­while, Ahye, who won her first-round heat in 11.04, did not get the spot in the women’s 100m fi­nal she was aim­ing for af­ter fin­ish­ing third in the se­mi-fi­nal run which was won by Marie-Josée Ta Lou of the Ivory Coast who clocked 10.79 from lane five, with Sh­er­ic­ka Jack­son of Ja­maica sec­ond with the same time from lane six, and Ahye in 11:00 flat from lane four.

Nei­ta of Great Britain al­so ran the same time while plac­ing fourth in semi­fi­nal three from lane four, and the lat­ter made it through to the fi­nal by one-thou­sandth of a sec­ond as the or­gan­is­ers de­cid­ing that Nei­ta was .992 sec­onds quick­er than T&T's Ahye's .993.

Women's 100m Semi­fi­nal Heat 1

Rank*Lane*Ath­lete*Coun­try*Re­ac­tion*Time*Notes

1*4*Elaine Thomp­son Her­ah*Ja­maica*0.157*10.76*Q

2*6*Ajla del Ponte*Switzer­land*0.109*11.01*Q

3 7*Di­na Ash­er-Smith*Great Britain*0.148*11.05

4*8*Jen­na Pran­di­ni*Unit­ed States*0.149*11.11*SB

5*2*Kham­i­ca Bing­ham*Cana­da*0.150*11.22

6*3*Ty­nia Gaither*Ba­hamas*0.130*11.31

7*9*Tat­jana Pin­to* Ger­many*0.163*11.35

—*5*Bless­ing Ok­ag­bare*Nige­ria*—*—*DNS

Women's 100m Semi­fi­nal Heat 2

Rank*Lane*Ath­lete*Coun­try*Re­ac­tion*Time*Notes

1*5*Marie-Josee Ta Lou*Ivory Coast*0.147*10.79*Q

2*6*Sh­er­ic­ka Jack­son*Ja­maica*0.147*10.79*Q

3*4*Michelle-Lee Ahye* Trinidad and To­ba­go*0.132*11.00*SB

4*7*Alexan­dra Burghardt*Ger­many*0.151*11.07

5*9*Ja­vianne Oliv­er* Unit­ed States*0.166*11.08

6*2*Crys­tal Em­manuel*Cana­da*0.149*11.21

7*3*Ge Man­qi*Chi­na*0.145*11.22

8*8*Asha Philip* Great Britain*0.134*11.30

Women's 100m Semi­fi­nal Heat 3

Rank*Lane*Ath­lete*Coun­try*Re­ac­tion*Time*Notes

1*5*Shelly-Ann Fras­er-Pryce*Ja­maica*0.136*10.73*Q

2*7*Mu­jin­ga Kam­bund­ji*Switzer­land*0.128*10.96*Q

3*6*Teah­na Daniels*Unit­ed States*0.144*10.98*q, PB

4*4*Daryll Nei­ta*Great Britain*0.135*11.00*q

5*9*Nzubechi Grace Nwokocha*Nige­ria*0.142*11.07

6*2*Gi­na Bass* The Gam­bia*0.140*11.16

7*8*Murielle Ahouré* Ivory Coast*0.124*11.28

8*3*An­na Bon­giorni* Italy*0.159*11.38

Women's 100m fi­nal

Rank*Lane*Ath­lete*Coun­try*Re­ac­tion*Time*Notes

1*4*Elaine Thomp­son Her­ah*Ja­maica*0.150*10.61*OR, PB - gold medal­list

2*5*Shelly-Ann Fras­er-Pryce*Ja­maica*0.139*10.74 - sil­ver medal­list

3*7*Sh­er­ic­ka Jack­son*Ja­maica*0.152*10.76*PB - bronze medal­list

4*6*Marie-Josée Ta Lou* Ivory Coast*0.158*10.91

5*8*Ajla Del Ponte*Switzer­land*0.129*10.97

6*9*Mu­jin­ga Kam­bund­ji*Switzer­land*0.138*10.99

7*3*Teah­na Daniels*Unit­ed States*0.144*11.02

8*2*Daryll Nei­ta*Great Britain*0.108*11.12