Jereem Richards grabs 200m gold in Jamaica, meets Olympic standard

ACE Trinidad and Tobago sprinter Jereem Richards grabbed a gold medal in his 200-metre pet event at the Racers Grand Prix at the National Stadium in Kingston, Jamaica on June 1 – securing his 2024 Olympic spot in the event in the process.

Running in lane six, Richards trailed Nigerian sprinter Udodi Onwuzurike at the halfway stage. However, as the athletes came into the straightaway, the 30-year-old Point Fortin native ate up the track and stormed back to surpass Onwuzurike down the stretch to finish first in 20.13 seconds – a season's best clocking.

The 21-year-old Onwuzurike, who won the 200m title at the World Under-20 Championship in Kenya in 2021, grabbed second spot in 20.27. Twenty-year-old Jamaican Bryan Levell grabbed third spot in 20.48.

It was not the first meeting between Richards and young Onwuzurike, as the TT star sped to 200m gold at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham in a blistering time of 19.80 to defend his 2018 crown. Onwuzurike finished sixth in the Birmingham final, and though he had a powerful start out of lane seven at the Racers Grand Prix, a fast-finishing Richards left him in his wake.

Richards, the 2022 World Indoor champion in the 400m event, is expected to be one of TT's medal hopefuls at this year's Paris Olympics, and his Kingston run took him just inside the 200m Olympic qualifying standard of 20.16.

Last month, running with the trio of Asa Guevara, Che Lara and Shakeem McKay, Richards helped TT book Olympic qualification in the men's 4x400m relay event during the World Athletics Relay Championship in Bahamas.