Dear Editor,
Congratulations to Steven Gardiner with his silver medal at the IAAF World Championships in London.
He has the potential to be one of the world's greatest runners in his time. However, raw talent must go along with a sensible strategy.
Did he believe that the semifinal was the final? When I saw him flat on his back and doing his personal best in the semifinal, I thought what he was thinking? It is one thing to lie flat on your back to get into a final, but he had plenty cushion and it was not necessary to do a personal best and Bahamian record.
He was obviously one of the favorites to win the gold so going into the semifinal all he needed to do was ensure he was one of the top three finishers. He expended too much energy in the semifinal. His body obviously did not recover, and the photo of him on his back should have been after the final.
His desire to only want to run in the final in the 4x400m shows his lack of understanding that to run in the finals you have to get into the finals - as the coach pointed out.
Only very deep teams such as the U.S. can afford to rest their fastest runner in a heat. That he might have to lie flat on his back again to get this team into the finals was not appealing to him. The 400m is a punishing race and the 4x400m was for team and country.
Again raw talent must combine with common sense race strategy in preliminaries to produce a world beater. He is still very young and I trust he can learn for 2020.

- Edroy Deveaux

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