The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

LONDON, England: With his body taking a toll after his gruelling three rounds that culminated with a silver medal in the men’s 400 metres, Steven Gardiner said he informed the Bahamas management team that he would need more time to recover so he could run in the final and not the heats of the 4 x 400m relay.

Without Gardiner, the team of Alonzo Russell, Michael Mathieu, Ojay Ferguson and Ramon Miller ran a season’s best of three minutes and .03.04 seconds that placed them sixth in their heat and 11th overall.

For the second year, The Bahamas failed to get into the final at the championships in between the bronze medal by the team of Russell, Mathieu, Gardiner and Chris ‘Fireman’ Brown at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

After taking his body to the next level becoming the first Bahamian to dip under the 44-second barrier when he lowered his national record to 43.89 to get into the final where he picked up the silver medal in 44.41 behind world record holder Wayde van Niekerk from South Africa, Gardiner said he informed team manager Dianne Woodside-Johnson that he was tired.

“I didn’t tell her I wasn’t running,” he said. “I told her that I can only do one round. That’s the final. I cannot do two rounds again. She told the media that I said I wasn’t running, which was not true.

“The coaches were there and the team was there when I told her that I would only be able to run the final because I was still sore and tired from running the individual event. I don’t know why she telling people and the media that I said I wasn’t representing my country.”

When he came to London, Gardiner said he came with the intentions of running the rounds in the 400m and also the relay, but after the toll his body had to endure, he was only willing to go one round in the relay and he wanted to give the team his best shot in the final.

“I never said the guys are too slow that I couldn’t run with them,” stated Gardiner, in comments attributed to him in another local media company. “I never said that.”

Gardiner said it was a sad indictment on him that he wasn’t forced to run in the semifinal when he informed the team that he was not yet ready to run.

“It’s probably because I;m not one of her athletes and she doesn’t care about me,” he said, “At the end of the day, I’m a human. If my body is tried, it’s tired. My body gets tired. The next thing you know I go out there and get hurt.

“What would she say if I was to get hurt. ‘Oh, well you shouldn’t have ran. You said you was tired. But I told you I was tired. It’s very sad that they would bring me down to that extent after I just won a medal for my country. And I don’t appreciate it.”

Gardiner said he expressed his feelings to the coaching staff because Johnson-Woodside wasn’t listening to him. He said he was even disappointed in his team-mates on the relay team, who didn’t even speak to him or congratulate him.

“Now it’s time for relay, they know who Steven Gardiner is,” he pointed out. “They don’t speak to me. They didn’t tell the media that part. It’s a problem. I’m bigger than that. They don’t speak to me. Only when it’s time for the relay, they know how to find me.”

Although he wasn’t running, Gardiner said the line-up was changed 45 minutes before the team was scheduled to run and they excluded one of the team members, Kendrick Thompson, was taken out of the line-up for one of the guys who he defeated at the national team trials in Grand Bahama in June.

“I’m an adult. The reason why I didn’t go out there was because I told her I wasn’t feeling well and I was going to jeopardise myself for a relay team and get hurt,” he said. “It’s not that I was saying that I wasn’t going to enjoy running the relay. I told her that I was tired.

“You can’t force an adult to do something when I know my rights and you can’t force someone to do something. I cannot go out there and perform if I’m not feeling well. I had a flu as well. They didn’t even care.”

Gardiner said he don’t like how they tried to “throw me under the bus.” He said only because the team didn’t qualify, they shift the attention on him when there was five “fresh guys,” who was waiting to run in the relay.

“That’s low,” he stated. “If it happens again in the futrue, I don’t want no part of it. I came to represent my country. My first year as a senior, they treated me horrible, but I didn’t go to the media. They said it I was running, they were not going to run. They want the ‘Golden Knights’ to run.

“Now today, they need me to run. I wasn’t going to be selfish with them. I was only going to run one round.”

Still trying to fully recover from the flu, Gardiner said he will go back to training in Florida to get ready for the Diamond League final in Zurich on August 24. He’s currently sitting in third place with 156 points behind Baboloki Thebe from Botswana and American Vernon Norwood with 35 and 19 points respectively.