The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

RIO de Janeiro, Brazil — Two medals, two national records and five appearances in a final has left head coach George Cleare quite thrilled about the performance of Team Bahamas in the athletic competition at the 2016 Olympic Games.

Team Bahamas wrapped up its competition at the Olympic Stadium on Saturday night in the grand finale with the quartet of Alonzo Russell, Michael Mathieu, Steven Gardiner and Chris ‘Fireman’ Brown securing the bronze medal in the men’s 4 x 400 metre relay.

“I think overall, Team Bahamas did very well,” Cleare said. “There’s no meet where everything goes exactly according to plans. We had some areas where we foresee some great things happening for us, but for some unseen circumstances, they didn’t happen.

“But we had some cases where some of our athletes rose to the occasion. One such athlete would have been Pedrya Seymour, who performed very well in the women’s 100 metre hurdles. I think her performance was the surprise of the meet for Team Bahamas.”

Primarily a newcomer to the meet, the new national record holder lowered her mark in the semi-final to qualify for the final where she was sixth overall. It was also the first time that Seymour competed in a major international meet for the Bahamas, having gotten some taste of the competition at the IAAF World Indoor Championships in April.

Seymour, a 21-year-old attending the University of Illinois, was coming off a spill over the first hurdle during the final of the NCAA Championships where she was unable to finish. She had dedicated her season to her deceased brother Keron Dean and had the second most consistent performance by all of the Bahamian athletes this year.

The most consistent came from Shaunae Miller, the Olympic gold medallist in the women’s 400m. There was some debate about whether or not she should have ran the 200m, but there was even more concern about her not being available to compete in the women’s 4 x 400m relay.

Without Miller, the team of Lanece Clarke, Anthonique Strachan, Carmiesha Cox and Christine Amertil made history as the Bahamas competed in the mile relay for the first time at the Olympics. The quartet just missed out of getting into the final, but posted a new national record in finishing sixth in their heat for 11th place overall.

The other medal came from the men’s 4 x 400m team of Alonzo Russell, Michael Mathieu, Steven Gardiner and Chris ‘Fireman’ Brown. While they didn’t get to successfully defend their title, the team picked up the bronze. The United States regained the gold and Jamaica clinched the silver.

During the course of the time they spent in Rio prior to the start of the competition, Cleare said the coaching staff focused on taking care of the small things so that they could get the athletes ready to compete. But he said that in moving forward, a greater effort will have to be made on preparing the athletes to compete in their individual events as opposed to just settling for relay duties.

“When I write my coaches’ report, I’m going to be making the recommendation that we spend more time trying to prepare the athletes to compete in the individual events, which in turn will allow us to produce stronger legs to compete in the relays,” he stressed.

“We’ve had athletes here who only came to compete in the relays. But I think if they had qualified for their individual events, the Bahamas would have definitely competed much better in the relays. We’re known for our relay strength and it was just disappointing that we didn’t have any teams in both the men and women 4 x 100m relays.”

Cleare, who personally coaches Clarke and Gardiner, the only one of three male quarter-milers to advance to the semi-final of the men’s 400m, commended the women’s 1,600m relay team for their pioneering performance in getting to the Olympics and lowering the national record.

And he also lauded the efforts of the men’s relay team, noting that both Gardiner and Brown ran exceptionally well in ensuring that the Bahamas got back on the podium, although it was difficult to stop the United States from dethroning the Bahamas.

Overall, Cleare said there are some issues that need to be addressed, but he prefers to discuss it with the Bahamas Association of Athletic Associations, the governing body for athletics in the country, rather than putting it out in the media.

He said in due time, he will reveal more of his concerns. But he thanked the coaching staff that included Rudolph Ferguson, Debbie Ferguson-McKenzie, James Rolle, Tyrone Burrows and Shaun Miller for the splendid job they combined to ensure that Team Bahamas was fully ready to compete.

Once the athletes went into the stadium to compete, Cleare said it was up to them to produce. Some did and there were others who fell short. But Cleare said, for the most part, he was quite pleased with the effort turned in and he’s looking forward to working with the BAAA, the coaches and the athletes in the future.

The games ended last night with the closing ceremonies and while a lot of the athletes have already left the games village, the remainder of the team should be out of Rio by Wednesday.

The team was a part of the Bahamian contingent that included Emily Morley, who made history as the first Bahamian to compete in rowing, along with swimmers Arianna Vanderpool-Wallace, Joanna Evans and Dustin Tynes. Morley made it to the E Final in the Women’s Single Sculls, while Vanderpool-Wallace just missed getting into the final of the 50m free, her specialty, Evans set two national records in the women’s 400 and 200m freestyles. She also contested the 800m free, her specialty.

The chef de mission for the team was Roy Colebrooke and the team manager was Ralf McKinney.

The Bahamas Olympic Committee was responsible for the team, which was sponsored by BTC.