It was a gold­en fi­nal day for T&T at the North Amer­i­can, Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (NACAC) Un­der-18 and U-23 Cham­pi­onships in Quere­taro, Mex­i­co, yes­ter­day.

First, Shani­qua Bas­combe com­fort­ably sped to the gold medal in the 200 me­tres event in a time of 24.00 sec­onds. This af­ter the Carif­ta 200m girls’ cham­pi­on ad­vanced with the fastest qual­i­fy­ing time of 23.49.

“I feel great. It was great to win an­oth­er medal for my coun­try. I have won the Carif­ta gold and now I have won the NACAC U-18 200m ti­tle,” said an elat­ed Bas­combe.

“My race was very good as I start­ed well and fol­lowed the in­struc­tions of my coach and ran the fi­nal 120m good I ex­e­cut­ed very well to­day (yes­ter­day),” added Bas­combe who thanked the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ics Ad­min­is­tra­tion of T&T (NAAATT) for giv­ing her an op­por­tu­ni­ty to com­pete and her coach Kelvin Nan­coo for his sup­port and ded­i­ca­tion.

Leah Bertrand al­so faced the starter in the half-lap event and placed fifth in 24.86.

T&T’s oth­er gold medal came in the Mixed U-18 4x400m re­lay af­ter a dom­i­nat­ing per­for­mance from Je­sa­iah Jones, Rae-Ann Serville Tae­jha Badal and Saeed Pom­pey, run­ning that or­der. The lo­cal quar­tet clocked 3:26.49 to reach the top of the podi­um.

Jerod El­cock al­so had suc­cess on the day, cop­ping a sil­ver medal in the men’s U-23 200m dash af­ter cross­ing in 20.65.

“I feel very ac­com­plished be­cause I worked very hard for this,” said El­cock. “I didn’t get a per­fect start but I ex­e­cut­ed per­fect­ly, I came off the bend and tran­si­tioned in­to the straight and came home strong and I came sec­ond.

“Over­all, the team per­formed well. Every­one per­formed to the best of their abil­i­ty and we are thank­ful for that.”

Sha­keem McK­ay com­pet­ed in the boys' U-18 200m fi­nal and went over the line in sev­enth place in 22.22 sec­onds.

On Sat­ur­day evening, T&T closed with two more medals thanks to Serville and the boys’ U-18 4x100m re­lay team.

Justin Guy, Devin Au­gus­tine, Jay­don Moore and Sha­keem Mc Kay, run­ning in that or­der placed copped sil­ver in a time of 41.82. To lo­cal quar­tet fol­lowed the Ja­maican team to the line who won in 41.17. In third place was Mex­i­co with 42.42.

Ear­li­er Serville ran away with bronze in the girls U-18 400m. The na­tion­al quar­ter-mil­er clocked 54.38 to place third while T&T an­oth­er run­ner in the event, Badal fin­ished sixth with a 55.53-clock­ing.

In the ver­sion of the one-lap event, Saeed Pom­pey crossed in sev­enth place in 49.39.

At the end of the three-day meet, T&T fin­ished in sixth place with sev­en medals, three gold, two sil­ver and two bronze. On day one, long jumper And­wuelle Wright won gold and Justin Guy bagged bronze in the 110m hur­dles in the morn­ing ses­sion on Sat­ur­day.

The USA end­ed in first place af­ter the three-day meet with 56 medals – 27 gold, 23 sil­ver and six bronze; in sec­ond place was hosts Mex­i­co with 63 medals 19 gold, 15 sil­ver and 29 bronze with Ja­maica third with 39 made up of 18 gold, 13 sil­ver and 8 bronze medals.

Al­so plac­ing ahead of T&T was Cana­da with 28(6 gold/9 sil­ver/13 bronze) and the Ba­hamas with eight(3 gold/4 sil­ver/1 bronze), re­spec­tive­ly.

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