media_artricles :: 2015

AGAINST THE ODDS

No podium pressure on Cedenio in 400 final

Machel Cedenio does not have the best of lane draws for today's IAAF World Championship men's 400 metres final, at the Bird's Nest Stadium here in Beijing, China. But the 19-year-old Trinidad and Tobago quartermiler is not discounting his chances, and will bid to make the most of his lane two assignment.

“I'm going into the final with a blind eye. I'm going to focus on my lane and try to get a medal.”

At 9.25 this morning (TT time), Cedenio will become only the fourth T&T athlete to face the starter in an IAAF World Championship 400m final.

Mike Paul was the first to achieve the feat. Twenty-six at the time, Paul clocked 45.80 seconds to finish seventh at the 1983 World Championships in Helsinki, Finland, the very first edition of the global athletics meet. Eight years later, in Tokyo, Japan, 29-year-old Ian Morris improved on Paul's performance, finishing sixth in 45.12.

It would be another 18 years, however, before another T&T quartermiler advanced to a World Championship 400m final. Renny Quow ended the championship race drought in style in Berlin, Germany in 2009, claiming bronze in 45.02 seconds.

Quow was not only the first T&T quartermiler to achieve a podium finish in a World Championship 400m event. At 21, the 2006 world junior champion was the youngest of the three T&T finalists.

Six years after Quow's superb showing, another rising star will bid for precious metal here in China.

Cedenio has a personal best of 44.36 seconds, a clocking he produced at the Cayman Invitational in May this year. Last season, that clocking would have given Cedenio a number four world ranking. And in the six seasons between 2008 and 2013, 44.36 would have been good enough for second or third on the year-end global performance list.

In the past, a quartermiler heading into a major championship final with such a fast season's best next to his name would surely have been counted among the favourites. The 2015 season, however, has seen a sub-44 blitz, and Cedenio is only in tenth spot on the world list. With six of the nine men currently ahead of him among the starters in today's final, the reigning world junior champion is not being given much of a chance of reaching the podium.

Three of the four men who joined the sub-44 club in 2015—Botswana's world-leader Isaac Makwala (43.72), Saudi Arabia's Yousef Ahmed Masrahi (43.93), and South African Wayde van Niekerk (43.96)—will be in the final. They run in lanes four, nine and seven, respectively.

Also in the 14-man sub-44 club are defending world champion LaShawn Merritt (43.74) of the United States and Grenada's 2012 Olympic gold medallist Kirani James (43.74). James has been drawn in lane five, and Merritt in eight.

British champion Rabah Yousif (lane three) and Dominican Republic's Olympic silver medallist Luguelin Santos (lane seven) complete the eight-man field. Lane one will be vacant.

The odds are stacked against Cedenio. The only teenager in the men's one-lap line-up is an outsider running in the inside lane. But without the podium pressure to deal with, who knows what this precocious talent is capable of producing.

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