T&T women’s 4x100m relay team qualified for the World Athletic Championships after the quartet of Semoy Hackett, Kai Selvon, Aleesha Barber and Kelly Ann Baptiste clocked 43.40 seconds to win the event at the Bahamas Junior and Senior Athletic Championships in Freeport Bahamas on Saturday. The local girls dipped under the required standard of 44.00 seconds to book their spot for the August 27-September 4 meeting. T&T defeated hosts Bahamas which included the 2001 World 200m champion and the 2008 World Junior champion. The win is the first over Bahamas since the Bahamians took silver at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin, Germany with T&T in seventh.
Ayanna Alexander scored another T&T victory taking the women’s triple jump with a leap of 13.25m. The 2010 Commonwealth Games silver medallist won by one metre over Pascale Delaunay of Haiti (12.25m). Barber and T&T’s men’s 4x400m team picked up silver. Barber, the 2010 Central American and Caribbean Games champion clocked 13.63 to finish behind Bahamian Ivanique Kemp (13.44) and ahead of another Bahamian, Petra McDonald (13.91). The national record holder at 12.85 was short of the World Championships qualifying standard (A-12.96/B-13.15).
T&T’s men’s 4x400m team of Renny Quow, Jarrin Solom, Ade Alleyne Forte and Deon Lendore clocked 3:04:31 to take second behind Bahamas (3:02:56) and missed out on the World Championship qualifying time by 0.31 seconds. At the Jamaican Championships Emmanuel Callendar was third in heat 4 of the men’s 200m preliminaries. The 2008 CAC Champion clocked 20.88 seconds, the 11th quickest of the round. Jamaica-based Ayanna Hutchinson was fourth in the second heat in the women’s 100m first round. Hutchinson clocked 11.59.
