The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

SOPOT, Poland — With a silver and bronze medal, the Bahamas placed tied with Belarus, Canada and the People’s Republic of China for 20th in the medal standings at the International Amateur Athletic Federation’s 15th World Indoor Championships.

The two appearances in the final over the three days of competition at the Ergo Arena left the 11-member team tied with Greece for 21st on the placing table with 13 points each.

For head coach Rupert Gardiner, the performance of the team was just about what he anticipated.

“The team performed extremely well,” he said. “They all did exactly what they were supposed to do. I was looking for three medals, but we fell short. But I’m happy with the silver and bronze medals.”

The performances of Shaunae Miller as the “rookie sensation” and Chris ‘Fireman’ Brown as the “crafty veteran” will be heralded for their consecutive silver and bronze medals in the women’s and men’s 400 metres on Saturday night.

“When I saw Shaunae win the medal, I was so excited because I was shouting for her from start to finish,” Gardiner said. “I just knew that she was capable of winning a medal and she came through.

“With Chris, we go way back from the time he was in high school, so it was just so good for me to be here to see him win this medal. This is my first World Indoor Championships that I’ve been to and so I am just pleased to be here to see the future star and the pacesetter perform at this level. That’s a good combination.”

Gardiner, however, said Warren Fraser and Sheniqua ‘Q’ Ferguson, who are starting to take their places among the future sprinters, along with Ryan Ingraham, who is gaining some respect in the high jump, deserve honourable mention.

Neither Ingraham or Donald Thomas advanced out of the preliminary round of the men’s high jump. While Thomas failed to clear the opening height (having experienced a toothache and twisting his ankle in the warm up), Ingraham bowed out after he cleared his second height for 15th place.

But the biggest disappointment for the Bahamas was the exit of the men’s 4 x 400 metre relay team in the heats. The team of Ramon Miller, Michael Mathieu, Andretti Bain and Latoy Williams could only muster a fourth place in 3:09.79. That left the Bahamas in eighth place, two spots out of the final picture.

The United States’ team of Kyle Clemons, David Verburg, Kind Butler and Calvin Smith went on to post a world indoor record of 3:02.13 with Great Britain taking the silver in a season’s best of 3:03.49 and Jamaica producing a national record of 3:03.69.

“We had some little hitches going into the relay, but we can’t let this performance get us down. We have the World Relays to look forward to, so we have some things that we must correct so we won’t be in the same predicament at home,” he said. “The Bahamian people like winners. They are so accustomed to our men’s 4 x 4 and even our women’s 4 x 100 relay teams winning, so we will have to be better prepared than we were here.

“We had a meeting the night before and one of the guys said he had a bad dream. I won’t say his name. But you won’t expect anyone to have a bad dream at this level. We had hoped they would have sucked it up, but things didn’t work in our favour. We just didn’t run fast enough.”

The heat, by the way, turned out to be the slowest of the two as it was recalled after Miller and the rest of the competitors on the first lap had almost completed the first lap. They eventually continued

after getting sufficient rest.

But after the final classification, only Great Britain who won, and Ukraine, who was second, advanced with the second and sixth and final spots. The other four spots came from heat one, led by the United States.

Although the Bahamas are the reigning Olympic champions, the United States won the World Outdoors title last year in Moscow, Russia, as the Bahamas failed to qualify. And they duplicated the feat here as the Bahamas once again didn’t get a lane in the final.

Gardiner is praying that there won’t be any more “bad dreams” or any “omen” for the team when the world, led by the United States, comes to the Bahamas for the inaugural IAAF World Relays May 24-25.