Olympic champion Keshorn Walcott is among four Trinidad and Tobago athletes selected to represent the Americas team at the September 13-14 IAAF Continental Cup, in Marrakech, Morocco.
Walcott and American Tim Glover will wear Americas colours in the men’s javelin. Last week Thursday, at the Weltklasse IAAF Diamond League finals in Zurich, Switzerland, Walcott broke his own national record, the 21-year-old field athlete hurling the spear 85.77 metres to finish second.
Triple Olympic medallist Richard “Torpedo” Thompson, triple Commonwealth Games medallist Cleopatra Borel and rising sprint star Michelle-Lee Ahye are the other T&T athletes on the Americas team.
Thompson, the second fastest man in the world this year at 9.82 seconds, and American sprinter Mike Rodgers will be on show in the men’s 100 metres dash. And in the sprint relay, Thompson and Rodgers are expected to team up with Jamaican Nesta Carter and St Kitts and Nevis’ 2003 100m world champion Kim Collins.
Borel and American Michelle Carter are the Americas throwers listed for the women’s shot put. Borel has been very consistent this season, bettering 18.50m in 12 of her 16 competitions.
In the Continental Cup women’s 100m, Ahye and Jamaican track star Veronica Campbell-Brown will face the starter. In late July, Ahye competed at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland, but was troubled by a hamstring injury and withdrew from the meet after her 100m first round heat. The T&T sprinter is second on the 2014 world performance list with the personal best 10.85 seconds clocking she produced in June, in the qualifying round at the NGC/Sagicor National Open Track and Field Championships.
Ahye will also see action in the Continental Cup women’s sprint relay.
The Americas team includes two reigning world champions—American LaShawn Merritt (men’s 400m) and Colombian Caterine Ibarguen (women’s triple jump)—as well as the 2012 Olympic Games women’s pole vault gold medallist, American Jenn Suhr.