The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

RIO de Janeiro, Brazil — With the city celebrating a holiday to support the 2016 Olympic Games, Team Bahamas was in preparation mode on a day off yesterday to get ready for the final two events over the next two days - the always exciting men and women 4 x 400m relays.

Head coach George Cleare said he was quite thrilled with the performances he has seen so far and if that’s any indication, he’s looking for both teams advancing to the final and being in contention to add to the Bahamas’ lone medal count.

“We’re off the track today, but our men and women 4 x 4 teams had their final shake- outs today,” said Cleare following their session. “So they are excited. That’s any exciting group of individuals. We’re trying to focus on the very small things because it’s very important with the relays, especially the 4 x 4s.

“So what we’re working on are the small things so that we won’t make those fundamental mistakes.”

What Cleare didn’t want to reveal were the line-ups and the order in which the Bahamas will send out its teams when the preliminaries are staged tonight at the Olympic Stadium with both teams drawing lane two in the second of two heats.

The women’s team, with the pool comprising of Olympic champion Shaunae Miller, veteran Christine Amertil, Lanece Clarke, Carmiesha Cox and Anthonique Strachan, will be competing against India in one, Great Britain in two, Italy in three, Jamaica in four, Germany in five, Cuba in seven and Canada in eight.

The team, which might not have the services of Miller, who is still nursing the bruises she received from her famous dive across the finish line for the gold medal over American Allyson Felix on Monday night in the women’s 400m final, will have to finish in the top three or post one of the next fastest times in order to qualify for Saturday’s final at 9 pm.

As the defending champions from London, England in 2012, the men will be back without Ramon Miller, the giant killer in the last triumph. But they have added national record holder Steven Gardiner and Stephen Newbold to the returning threesome of Demetrius Pinder, Michael Mathieu and veteran Chris ‘Fireman’ Brown.

Like the women, the men too will have to take one of the top three spots in their heat that will include Great Britain in lane one, India in two, Belgium in three, Brazil in four, the Dominican Republic in five, Cuba in seven and Venezuela in eight. The next two fastest teams will complete the field for the final at 9.35pm on Saturday.

“I just want to advise the Bahamian people to keep their eyes glued to their TV because it’s going to be very fast as always,” he declared.

Prior to taking the break, Cdue in part to no athletes qualifying for any of the finals contested and no teams included in the line-up for the heats of the men and women 4 x 100m relays, Cleare said the Bahamas had four finalists, a gold medal and a national record breaking performance.

“We’ve had two jumpers in the high jump, who have gotten their ranking in the world, we had Shaunae’s dive in the women’s 400m that is still being talked bout round the world and we had Pedrya Seymour making it to the final and just barely missing out on getting a medal in the women’s 100m hurdles and she is going to get faster in the future,” Cleare said.

“So right now, everybody is really excited and we’re moving into the right direction. We can’t forget Ty’Nia Gaither, who made an appearance in the women’s 200m semi’s and Steven Gardiner, who also made an appearance in the men’s 400m semi’s. They both didn’t run the races that they expected, but I think it still bodes well for us for the future in those events.”

He had predicted that the Bahamas will leave these games with 3-4 medals and with two more events to go, his prediction might just come close to reality.