From Orin Gordon in London
Now it gets serious. For Aliann Pompey and Team Guyana, for whom all three track athletes compete at the London Olympic stadium today.
Pompey, arguably Guyana’s one world-class athlete, is into the semi finals of the women’s 400 metres at the 2012 Olympics.
Today is the race of her life, the semi finals. The semis were her high water mark in Beijing four years ago, where she placed 11th overall. The final eight would represent real, tangible progress, irrespective of how she finishes.
Her American coach Joe Ryan, is blunt.
“In the end, all we can hope for is that she lays everything on the line, and I’m pretty convinced that she can do that”, he told me.
“She has to, frankly.”
The field is formidable.
“(Christina Ohorogou, the UK and reigning olympic champion) is a fantastic athlete”, Ryan said when asked to assess the overall field.
“Sanya Richards is in the mix and the Russian (Antonina Krivoshapka) looked really outstanding.”
However the day’s fastest time, 50.40, went to the winner of Pompey’s heat, Amantle Montsho of Botswana.
Pompey ran her fastest time of the year, 52.10s, in placing fourth. She had the outside lane, lane 8, the one quarter milers hate. They can’t take pacing cues from the athletes who are all behind them on the staggered start, and tend to run too hard, too fast, too early.
As did Pompey on Friday, according to her coach Ryan.
“I’m very pleased with how she ran the first 200, 300 metres, but it was faster than her normal pace.”
This is the third Olympic Games for the affable 34-year-old US based athlete, who has also competed in five World championships, was a Commonwealth Games gold medallist in 2001, and a Pan Am Games bronze medallist the following year. She’s more than twice the age of Britany Van Lange, the 15-year-old considered the baby of the team, and vastly more experienced than her or any other competitor on Team Guyana.
Her experience of big games shows. She looks naturally at ease in competition settings and around the village, and had struck up friendships with a number Bahamian athletes, with whom she’s gone out of the complex for meals.
I’d had a long conversation with her in Beijing, for an interview I was doing for the BBC and US public radio. She remembers our meeting, and though she’s not given to saying much, nods, smiles and slips easily and naturally into a brief conversation. She’s clearly at ease in the competitive hothouse of the London Olympics.
Pompey’s best time is 50.71 seconds clocked at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin, but she’s running out of time to hear the starter’s gun in an Olympics 400 metres final. Surely Rio de Janeiro in 2016 when she’ll be 38, is beyond her. Whatever happens tomorrow, she’s been one of the most enduring servants of Guyana athletics.
Earlier in the day, Jeremy Bascom will have to cope with the dazzling spotlight that will shine on Usain Bolt and to a lesser extent, Tyson Gay, Asafa Powell and Yohan Blake, as he competes in the men’s 100. It’s one of the toughest stages in global sport.
Bascom has a season’s best of 10.19, and realistically has to run sub-10 second times to have a hope of making the final eight, and perhaps even getting out of round one.
He’s the joint national record holder with James Wren Gilkes. Gilkes made the semifinals in both the 100-metre and 200-metres at the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow—- the games in which Michael Anthony Parris won Guyana’s only Olympic medal to date, in boxing.
But Bascom did make the semifinals in the 60-metres at World Indoor Championships in Istanbul earlier this year, and has some decent form.
Winston George goes earlier in heat 6 in the men’s 400 metres. Unlike Pompey, he has drawn lane 6, and will have the athletes in the two outside lanes in his eyeline at the start.
The track and field athletes finally get their chance, after the tedium of a week of training, eating and sleeping in the village.
“They’ve had time to settle and get used to the conditions,” said Chef-de-Mission Dr. Karen Pilgrim.
“Aliann’s progression to the second round has given real impetus to the two young men,” Dr. Pilgrim ended.
