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Author Topic: Golden celebration: Remembering Edwin Roberts, Wendell Mottley & 1960's 4x4 Team  (Read 4857 times)

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Offline Socapro

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Golden celebration
Remembering Edwin Roberts’ Olympic first

By Kwame Laurence kwame.laurence@trinidadexpress.com
Story Created:    Oct 16, 2014 at 9:06 PM ECT (T&T Express)


'EXTREMELY GOOD': Edwin Roberts in action in the 1960s

Men's 200m Final - Tokyo Olympics 1964 - Edwin Roberts T&T Bronze
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/mdfB8ni1FK0" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/mdfB8ni1FK0</a>

Happy anniversary Trinidad and Tobago.
 
No, I have not gotten my independence date mixed up. Exactly 50 years ago, Edwin Roberts became the country’s first Olympic medallist in the sport of athletics, claiming bronze in the men’s 200 metres final in 20.6 seconds.
 
That 200 bronze at the 1964 Games in Tokyo, Japan was also the very first post-independence Olympic medal for T&T. So, to Roberts and all of T&T, a happy golden anniversary.
 
“I think there was a greater sense of nationalism,” says historian Dr Basil Ince, “because Trinidad and Tobago had just become independent. The real nationalist environment came with Eric Williams, from ’56, moving towards independence. So, by the time we went to the Games, in ’64…people were looking forward to these Games because Trinidad was now a sovereign nation.”
 
Roberts, a 23-year-old sprinter from Belmont, was selected to represent the “Red, White and Black”, and advanced all the way to the 200 final.
 
Drawn in lane eight in the championship race, Roberts squared off against seven other sprinters, including Italy’s reigning Olympic champion, Livio Berruti, and Americans Henry Carr, Paul Drayton and Richard Stebbins.
 
“When I settled into the blocks,” Roberts recalls, “I didn’t feel any burden…I felt expectation. Running in an outside lane, everybody chases you. You can’t see anybody in front of you. So, it’s a mindset, how you have to plot your race. I accelerated, and right at the tape, I came very close to getting second.
 
“Paul Drayton, who is deceased now, was very upset that he got second. I said ‘man, you should be glad,’ in my subconscious mind, ‘that you got second, because I was right on your tail’.”
 
Carr won in an Olympic record time of 20.3 seconds, with Drayton (20.5) second and Roberts (20.6) third.
 
For the first time in history, the “Red, White and Black” was raised during an Olympic Games medal ceremony.
 
At the time, however, the significance of the achievement was not uppermost on Roberts’ mind. In the excitement of the moment, it did not dawn on him that he was the country’s first post-independence Olympic medallist.
 
The North Carolina College student recalls his thoughts as he stood on the podium.
 
“I did it and I’m happy to get third place, and to see my flag go up into the air…not knowing I was the first. It never did cross my mind. As that flag went up, I was enthusiastic, I was happy, I was proud. I did my job for my country.”
 
Thirty-two years later, Ato Boldon became only the second T&T athlete to earn an Olympic 200m medal, following in Roberts’ strides with bronze at the 1996 Atlanta Games.
 
“For me, I looked back and said, okay, I can do this because somebody like an Edwin Roberts did it long before I stepped foot on the track.
 
“Edwin Roberts was extremely good,” Boldon continues. “If he had a little bit more exposure in terms of being seen by the T&T viewing public, he would probably be held in much higher esteem than he is. To me, he is one of the most underrated sprinters in Trinidad and Tobago history.”
 
Roberts lives in Pennsylvania, USA, and has stayed close to athletics through coaching and officiating.
 
“I got involved in officiating in athletics after I semi-retired,” says Roberts. “I was running Masters and officiating. In the last three years, I started to do starting.
 
“A lot of people ask me if I miss coaching. I say no. I’m still in the field. I’m still coaching people by talking to them while I’m officiating. Do this, do that, but I’m not their actual coach. I’ll give them advice.”
 
Roberts is 73, but is young at heart, and has an excellent rapport with the teenagers he interacts with while officiating at track and field meets in Pennsylvania.
 
The Olympic medallist wants to make a contribution to the development of the sport here in T&T. Equipped with vast knowledge and incredible people skills, Roberts certainly has what it takes to inspire today’s generation of Olympic aspirants.

• EDITOR’S NOTE: Next Friday, we look back at Wendell Mottley’s 400m silver medal at the Tokyo Games.
« Last Edit: March 29, 2015, 06:16:00 AM by Socapro »
De higher a monkey climbs is de less his ass is on de line, if he works for FIFA that is! ;-)

Offline Socapro

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Tasting Tokyo silver: The Wendell Mottley chapter revisited
« Reply #1 on: October 24, 2014, 12:11:57 PM »
Tasting Tokyo silver
The Wendell Mottley chapter revisited

By Kwame Laurence kwame.laurence@trinidadexpress.com
Story Created:    Oct 23, 2014 at 9:02 PM ECT (T&T Express)


EN ROUTE TO SILVER: Wendell Mottley, left (with glasses), en route to silver in the men's 400 metres final, at the 1964 Olympic Games, in Tokyo, Japan. Mottley's Trinidad and Tobago teammate, Edwin Skinner, right, finished eighth.

Men's 400m Final - Tokyo Olympics 1964 - Wendell Mottley T&T Silver
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/iQ2E1_T2zfs" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/iQ2E1_T2zfs</a>

On October 19, 1964, Wendell Mottley captured Trinidad and Tobago’s first ever Olympic 400 metres medal. The bespectacled quartermiler produced a 45.2 seconds clocking to earn silver at the Tokyo Games, just behind American Mike Larrabee (45.1).

Mottley became the country’s second post-independence Olympic medallist, following in the strides of Edwin Roberts, who had earned 200m bronze two days earlier.

Mottley says a lot of his success on the track has to do with his secondary school experience.

“The institution of Queen’s Royal College, and it was quite an institution, had a profound effect on my life. Certainly John Grell, certainly Horace Springer, as Games Masters at QRC, spent enormous time with us, and had a profound effect. But then, at the same time, you had Jeffrey Stollmeyer coming back to coach cricket, and out of that came Deryck Murray. You had cyclists come back to coach, and out of that you had Roger Gibbon. And of course QRC produced great footballers, Lincoln Phillips and so forth, all at the same time.

“And then,” Mottley continues, “one Leroy Williams, an old QRC boy, came back to coach track and field. Out of that very, very rich medium came a lot of great sportsmen, great athletes. It was a time of QRC renaissance, because at the same time you had Peter Minshall coming up in the arts. That hothouse atmosphere of achievement was very, very important to all of us, and we all supported each other.”

One of Mottley’s contemporaries at QRC, Edwin Skinner, finished eighth in the 1964 Olympic 400m final in 46.8 seconds. And another T&T athlete, Belmont Intermediate old boy Kent Bernard exited at the semifinal stage of the same event.

Mottley, who finished second in his semifinal heat in 45.9 seconds, recalls the build-up to the championship race.

“The first thing is that you warm up outside, and you’re very much an individual. Then you go into the stadium, and the dark and the hush.

The Japanese officials come by and they check your numbers, and for the first time real nerves because you’re aware of your fellow competitors right at your side. Then you go out of that environment, through the archway of the tunnel into the bright lights of the stadium and 60-plus thousand people. Nerves start to kick in.

“You have worked all your life for this, and this is the moment, and you start getting nervous. But then, once you start knocking your blocks in and you put the nails in, you shut everything else out, and you focus. All the training that you’ve done, all the repeat 200s that you’ve done over several years comes to focus, and you just become a highly concentrated machine.”

The Mottley machine remembers the 1964 Olympic men’s 400m final as though it happened yesterday.

“I get off to an excellent start, and very quickly haul into the lead. The guy who I’m watching, Ulis Williams is caught. I come onto the back stretch and feel very confident. And then on to the home stretch, I see the tape, probably 70 yards away, and I start to feel hmmm, I could bite gold, I could even taste it. I see through the edge of my eye, I see this shadow, it’s not even a figure, and at the actual tape I lose this race by what we in Trinidad would call ah umph, ah umph.

“There’s disappointment at first,” Mottley recalls. “But then the overwhelming feeling thereafter. Relief. Regrets that you didn’t get that gold, which I’d set my heart on. I could actually taste it. The mind is saying there’s gold there for you. But then comes relief that it’s finished and done with, and that you must then garner up enough energy and so forth to deal with the relay coming thereafter.”

T&T’s quadruple OIympic medallist, Ato Boldon is now one of the world’s leading track and field analysts.

“Everybody, if you ask them, almost acts as though our Olympic history started with Hasely (Crawford). Our Olympic track and field history began with Wendell Mottley,” Boldon declares. “He was so good for so long. He had the credentials at the NCAA level, at the Olympic level, relays and individual...came very, very close to being an Olympic gold medallist.

“To me, you don’t get to Hasely until you look back at how close Wendell came. Sometimes, you have to have somebody almost get there for somebody else looking on in Trinidad and Tobago to say: ‘You know what, look how close he came. I can do it.’ As a result, I hold Wendell in very, very high esteem in terms of T&T Olympic history.”

Though he is now 73, Mottley still has an active professional life. The former Government Minister is Chairman of the Unit Trust Corporation.

But while he has made significant contributions to the political and economic landscape, it is Mottley’s silver run at the Tokyo Olympics 50 years ago that has earned him his very own chapter in the T&T history books.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Next Friday, we celebrate Trinidad and Tobago’s 4x400 metres bronze at the Tokyo Games
« Last Edit: March 07, 2015, 07:36:30 PM by Socapro »
De higher a monkey climbs is de less his ass is on de line, if he works for FIFA that is! ;-)

Offline Socapro

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The Genesis Chapter ’64 success complete with 4x4 bronze
« Reply #2 on: October 31, 2014, 06:42:33 PM »
The Genesis Chapter
’64 success complete with 4x4 bronze

By Kwame Laurence kwame.laurence@trinidadexpress.com
Story Created:    Oct 30, 2014 at 8:34 PM ECT (T&T Express)


PIONEERS: Trinidad and Tobago’s 1964 Olympic medallists, from left, Kent Bernard, Edwin Roberts, Wendell Mottley and Edwin Skinner display their precious metal.

Men's 4 x 400m Final - Tokyo Olympics 1964 - T&T Bronze
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/E4RdKf8Xpdw" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/E4RdKf8Xpdw</a>

Prior to the 1964 Games in Tokyo, Japan, Trinidad and Tobago’s Olympic honour roll featured just two men—weightlifters Rodney Wilkes and Lennox Kilgour.

Ahead of the men’s 4x400 metres final, in Tokyo, the list doubled, 200m bronze medallist Edwin Roberts and 400m silver medallist Wendell Mottley opening the country’s Olympic track and field account.

There was the opportunity for Edwin Skinner, Kent Bernard, Roberts and Mottley to add to the haul in the 4x4 championship race.

Skinner ran the leadoff leg for T&T.

“I brought the baton in about the same with the US and Jamaica.”

Skinner handed the baton to Kent Bernard, who had to do battle with 400m gold medallist Mike Larrabee, of the United States.

“When we got to the straightaway,” says Bernard, “Larrabee started moving, and I did too. We both passed the Englishman, and I gave it to Roberts in a good position.”

Roberts squared off against American Ulis Williams.

“He and I ran neck and neck,” Roberts recalls, “and I passed off the stick to Wendell.”

Anchorman Mottley decided to go for gold, chasing American Henry Carr, the 200m champion.

“I got the baton break in a crowd of athletes, and I immediately took the baton with George Kerr from Jamaica slightly ahead of me and on the inside of me, and I knew that if I was to catch the United States, I couldn’t wait. As I tried to go around Kerr, he was running with the baton flailing so I had to run wide. That took a lot of energy and time, so coming into the final 50 yards or so I ran out of gas.

“I couldn’t fend off the challenge from Britain’s (Robbie) Brightwell,” Mottley explains, “and we had to settle for third place. Had I played safe and knew that I couldn’t catch the US, we could have certainly won the silver.”

Skinner says there was momentary disappointment when Mottley crossed the finish line third, T&T earning bronze in three minutes, 01.7 seconds, behind United States (3:00.7) and Great Britain (3:01.6).

“I said ‘oh my gosh, it didn’t happen’. But then it occurred to me, ‘hey, you won an Olympic medal’. I was extremely elated.”

T&T reached the men’s 4x400m final at the next four Olympic Games-- ‘68, ’72, ’76, and ’80. There was another championship race appearance at the 1992 Games in Barcelona, Spain. But it was not until 2012 that the 1964 top-three achievement was matched, Lalonde Gordon, Jarrin Solomon, Ade Alleyne-Forte and Deon Lendore combining for bronze in London, England in a then national record time of 2:59.40.

“It didn’t hit me right away,” says Solomon, “but it hit me probably the next couple days or the next week. Everybody was saying that was a big feat for you guys. You weren’t supposed to get a medal, you weren’t picked to get a medal. You came out of nowhere and ran the best that Trinidad and Tobago has ever run. Now you’re putting T&T back on the map, as far as the 4x4 goes, since the 1964 Olympics.

“So once everybody started talking about that, that’s when the sense of history kicked in, that we did something special.”

Skinner was one of the T&T coaches at the 2012 London Games. He took a special interest in the men’s 4x4 final, and was particularly pleased when anchorman Lendore fought off a strong challenge from Great Britain’s Martyn Rooney.

“Some days before,” says Lendore, “coach Edwin Skinner told us about the fact that they got dipped out by Great Britain. After we attained the medal, I went up to him and told him that I did this one for him, to bring back revenge for what happened to them back in those days.”

Forty-eight years after the 1964 successes, T&T finally surpassed that three-medal haul. Keshorn Walcott struck gold in the men’s javelin, leading the charge as the country produced a record haul of four Olympic medals in London. Lalonde Gordon in the men’s 400, the men’s 4x4 team, and the men’s 4x100m combination of Keston Bledman, Marc Burns, Emmanuel Callendar and Richard “Torpedo” Thompson earned bronze medals for T&T.

In between 1964 and 2012, Hasely Crawford captured the country’s first gold, winning the men’s 100m dash in 1976, Ato Boldon secured four individual sprint medals in 1996 and 2000, and Thompson earned 100m silver in 2008, before teaming up with Bledman, Burns and Callendar for 4x1 silver at the same Games. Aaron Armstrong ran in the 2008 4x1 heats, and was also awarded a silver medal.

“With all respect to what happened prior to 1964 with our first medals in weightlifting,” says Boldon, who is now one of the world’s leading track and field analysts, “you cannot write the story of Trinidad and Tobago track and field without starting with Genesis. The Genesis chapter is 1964.”

The Tokyo Games, coming just two years after T&T attained independence, undoubtedly signalled the birth of a track nation.
« Last Edit: March 07, 2015, 07:36:56 PM by Socapro »
De higher a monkey climbs is de less his ass is on de line, if he works for FIFA that is! ;-)

Offline Socapro

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Re: Golden celebration: Remembering Edwin Roberts’ Olympic first!
« Reply #3 on: March 07, 2015, 07:09:14 PM »
Olympic athletes from Trinidad & Tobago share their experiences of competing in international, regional, and national sports events during the 1960's and 1970's.

The Miracle Team: A Documentary
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/QzMWC5R2ZQo" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/QzMWC5R2ZQo</a>


And here is video of their world record run in 1966!

1966 Commonwealth Games 4x440 yards relay final
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/dTYCGsTI56g" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/dTYCGsTI56g</a>

The venue was in Kingston, Jamaica and this was arguably T&T's greatest ever 4x4 relay quartet featuring Lennox Yearwood, Kent Bernard, Edwin Roberts & Wendell Mottley!

T&T clocked a world record of 3:02.8. Here is the link to official results from the 1966 Commonwealth Games: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athletics_at_the_1966_British_Empire_and_Commonwealth_Games

At these games T&T placed 6th in the final medal table just behind Kenya!  :beermug:

NB: 440 yards is equivalent to 402.34 metres which is 1609.36 metres over 4 laps.
So T&T's winning time was ran over an extra 9.36 metres when compared to the modern 4x400m Relay.
Based on this my calculation is that T&T would have ran 3:01.74 for our world record if the time was measured over 1600 metres in that same historic relay race.
« Last Edit: March 07, 2015, 07:37:59 PM by Socapro »
De higher a monkey climbs is de less his ass is on de line, if he works for FIFA that is! ;-)

 

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