Jereem Richards (© Alex Andrei)
"When I see someone win from a Caribbean island, I feel like I win, too."
Jereem Richards is a multiple global medallist, who got 400m gold for Trinidad and Tobago at the 2022 World Indoor Championships in Belgrade.
He also formed part of his nation’s victorious 4x400m team at the 2017 World Championships in London and in an exclusive interview with World Athletics Inside Track, the 30-year-old talks about the Caribbean connection in athletics ahead of Paris 2024 from where he hopes to bring home his first Olympic medal.
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"I would say Trinidad and Tobago is a melting pot of the Caribbean. We have a very diverse people and we have a mixture of cultures when it comes to food, music and everything like that. It’s definitely a really great country," he says.
"Track and field, to me, means a lot. To Trinidad and Tobago it is definitely one of the most successful sports we had in history, I would say the most successful sport we had in the history of Trinidad and Tobago. I try my best to use my platform to not just educate people about the sport, but keep the people of Trinidad and Tobago interested in track and field.
"It means a lot to see a fellow Caribbean island athlete win something. It definitely feels special.
"A piece of advice to someone young in track and field, I would say: try to find the good in each and every situation. Even if things don’t go your way, there’s going to be something, some part of that bad situation, that had good in it. And even if you can’t find the good in it, use it as an example of what not to do or use it as motivation working forward.
"This has been my dream, to be an Olympic medallist, from the first day I started running track and field, and I’m just excited to go through the cycle this year and see how it turns out in Paris. I think my entire life journey builds up to this moment."
