Gordon aims for world record mark

Gordon was disappointingly just short of a medal at the World Championships in Berlin last August but is eyeing a gold medal at the World Junior Championships next year and possibly the world record in the not too distant future.

The 18-year-old was chosen by the game’s governing body IAAF for a presentation unveiling a new logo for the World Championships — which raised a few eyebrows — but the governing body knew he was one of the rising stars.

He showed his promise during the Championships by advancing to the final and was beaten into fourth place, breaking the national record, while clocking the fastest-ever time by a 17-year-old - 48.26 seconds.

“It really inspired me seeing that I train at home, locally, and not with the best of facilities. I now know that if I really go out there and put in the type of work, I could be the world record holder. I was so impressed at myself for doing so good. Next year, hopefully, if I stay healthy and keep on training hard I should have better things coming,” he said. He noted that his success should inspire other young athletes to put in the hard work now to reap the benefits.

“Actually, after seeing what I achieved at my age, a lot of athletes who thought they had to wait until they are older to actually do what they want, may now realise that if they train hard, stay focused, actually know what they have to do and need to do, they would realise it can be attained at anytime, not necessary at 21 or 26 but even younger than they have expected,” he said.

Gordon was critical of the planning surrounding the Pan Am Games which was hosted in Trinidad earlier this year, arguing that his training was hampered due to the renovations and preparation being done at the Hasely Crawford Stadium, Mucurapo for the Caribbean Games.

Gordon placed second in the final, losing his world leading junior time.

“I was just vexed. I was pissed to see it just slip away like that, right there. I could have defeated the winner because I was training hard the whole season and for that small period of time the training was not what it was supposed to be,” he revealed.

Gordon pointed out that he had to travel to different stadia to train and the surfaces were not ideal to his programme.

“I was just a bit more pressured because everyone expected so much and did not know what was going on because we had to be travelling so far to different stadiums to train and the tracks were so hard elsewhere,” he said.

The Maraval resident is expecting greater things for 2010, however, and noted that his training is ahead of what it was last year. He revealed that he has a lot more confidence in his coach Dr Ian Hypolite after their experience at the World Championships. Hypolite predicted that he would secure a place in the semifinals once he broke the national record and also told him he expected him to run in the 48 seconds bracket which he did.

Gordon is the latest track star to emerge from TT after Richard Thompson, Renny Quow and Josanne Lucas excelled individually on the international stage in the past two years. The QRC student is being tipped to achieve a feat never before done by a local athlete — break a world record. Kevin Young’s 17-year record of 46.78, ran at the Barcelona Olympics looms as an unreachable monument but Gordon’s impressive performance at the ‘Worlds’ shows that he can hurdle any challenge placed before him. The TT hurdler was recently interviewed by TrackAlerts.com website.