media_artricles :: 2015

Decent showing

Borel, Bovell continue to fly T&T flag

Team Trinidad and Tobago finished with its second best medal haul at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland, when they bagged three silver and five bronze.

Olympic men’s javelin champion Keshorn Walcott, 400 metres hurdles world champion Jehue Gordon and shot putter Cleopatra Borel were the silver medallists. Bronze went to triple jumper Ayanna Alexander, quartermiler Lalonde Gordon, lightweight boxer Michael Alexander, and the men’s 4x100m and 4x400m relay teams, respectively.

Keston Bledman, Marc Burns, Rondel Sorrillo and Richard “Torpedo” Thompson combined for the sprint relay medal. And in the 4x400m final, Lalonde Gordon, Jarrin Solomon, Renny Quow and Zwede Hewitt wore T&T colours. Quow sat out the qualifying round, and third leg duties were performed by Jehue Gordon.

Hypolite, the Chef de Mission for T&T, an executive member of the Trinidad and Tobago Olympic Committee (TTOC) and the coach of Gordon (Jehue), described the eight-medal haul as “quite a good performance”.

After smashing the national record in the preliminary rounds with a throw of 85.24, Walcott would eventually copped silver with an 82.67 effort.

Borel was also runner up in the Women’s shot put event and now has three Commonwealth medals to her name, having won bronze in Melbourne, Australia (2006), silver in Delhi, India (2010), and now silver in Glasgow, to stamp her consistency on the event.

And Gordon, after a rough season of ups and downs, ran his heart out to achiev his season’s best time of 48.75 which was good enough for silver.

Ayanna Alexander bounced back from a serious ankle injury earlier this year to earn bronze, the 32-year-old athlete jumping 14.01 metres following up on her 2010 Commonwealth silver.

In boxing, Michael Alexander earned bronze while top T&T swimmer George Bovell performed below par to finish fifth in the Men’s 50m free after suffering the effects of overtraining.

Meanwhile, at the Central American and Caribbean Games in Veracruz, Mexico, Bovell would rebound as he and Borel both won gold medals, team T&T’s only golden performances. Borel successfully defended her shot put title with a best distance of 18.99 metres.

Although Borel failed to hit her personal best of 19.42 metres or the CAC Games record of 19.36m, she improved steadily with each round as she recorded distances of 17.84m, 18.07m, 18.38m, 18.53m, in her first four attempts before hitting her winning target on her fifth throw. She attempted to break the 19m mark with her sixth and final effort but did not produce a legal throw.

Bovell completed a three-peat of titles in the Men’s 50m free winning the country’s first gold medal on the final day of the swimming competition. It was the 2004 Athens Olympic bronze medallist’s third consecutive gold medal at the regional Games, dating back to his first at the 2006 CAC in Cartagenas, Colombia, and the 2010 CAC event in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico.

Bovell who swam out of lane one, splashed to a 22.30 second clocking for the one-lap blue riband event to easily defeat the rest of the field including Suriname’s Tjon-a-Joe Rezo (22.63) and Hansir Garcia of Cuba (22.69). Bovell had also earned a bronze in the Men’s 50m backstroke to open his medal account.

Boxer Michael Alexander also won bronze in the men’s boxing 60kg light-welterweight class, despite a walkover defeat to Mexican Lindolfo Delgado. The Trinidad and Tobago men’s hockey team also claimed silver when they lost 5-1 to Cuba in a one-sided final.

In Judo, Christopher George claimed Trinidad and Tobago’s sixth bronze medal at the World Trade Center, defeating Jesse De Leon in the men’s 100 kilogramme category in the bronze medal round of the competition.

Dorian Alexander fought his way to secure T&T’s second bronze medal, when he defeated Costa Rica’s Carlos Solis in the quarterfinals of the Men’s Under 68kg Taekwondo.

Cyclist Kwesi Browne added another bronze to T&T’s medal tally when he copped third spot in the men’s Keirin in an event won by Colombia’s Fabiano Hernando Puerta.

And the table tennis pair of Dexter St Louis and Curtis Humphreys earned men’s doubles bronze after they were beaten 6-11, 7-11, 9-11, by Puerto Rico’s Brian Afanadour and Daniel Gonzalez in their semi-final matchup.

Shooter Roger Daniel had opened T&T’s first medal at the Veracruz Games when he picked up bronze in the men’s 10m air pistol final at the El Lencero Police Academy. Daniel shot his way to 175.8 points to trail Cuba’s Jorge Grua (201.2) and Maurillo Morales of Mexico (196.8).

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