Kineke Alexsander of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (© Terry Finistere)
member Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States has produced some fantastic talent in the women's 400m dash. Hazel-Ann Regis of Grenada and Louisiana State University is just out of the IAAF World Rankings top 10 for her event, with a season’s best 50.64. Still shy of her 20th birthday, Tiandra Ponteen (St. Kitts-Nevis and University of Florida) is in the top 50.
So Kineke Alexander has some big footsteps in which to follow. This year, the 18-year-old from St. Vincent & the Grenadines showed she has the goods to make the leap, taking silver in the under-20 women's 400m at the CARIFTA Junior Track & Field Championships in Hamilton, Bermuda. Her career-best and national-record 53.83 seconds ranked her among the world's top juniors, not far behind Jamaica's Sonita Sutherland, the CARIFTA champion.
It's a far cry from her first CARIFTA experience, in 2001, when she made the finals, but finished dead last. She was exceedingly nervous going in, she admits. She had never heard of her opponents, but "from what I had heard, the girls were fast!" Her coaches told her to go out there and give it her all, so she did, and when she realised that on that occasion her all was still not enough, she determined to get better. And these days, she doesn't come last any more.
In fact, Kineke - who is from the community of Mesopotamia in SVG - got into athletics because she won her very first race.
"When I was in primary school," she recalls, "I ran the 400m and came first and then they had a meet and I did well, so I started to train for the Caribbean Union of Teachers' meet. I was about 8 or 9 years old."
Her coaches and family encouraged her to stick with it (she didn't need much convincing), and though she knows the 400m is one of the most difficult events in athletics, the tall, slim teenager remains determined.
The same year she made her CARIFTA debut, Kineke went to the World Youth Championship in Debrecen, Hungary, finishing fifth in her heat with a personal-best 57.54, but missing out on advancement. In 2003, in Sherbrooke, she ran 56.39 and advanced to the second round, though she says she was less well prepared than in 2001, because in 2003 she had to deal with school-leaving exams, which took up a lot of her time.
The race picked her as much as she did it; though she tried the 200m, 800m and long jump as a kid, the quarter-mile was far and away her best event. As a young athlete, she idolised World champion and World record holder Michael Johnson, because he "made it look easy."
Nowadays, her heroes are closer to home, Jamaica's Usain Bolt and Grenada's Alleyne Francique, two of the region's World champions. Like Johnson, they "make it look easy," something Kineke hopes one day to say about herself.
She's been with a few coaches, including Wilma Bertha and Gideon Labban, and she's learned from each of them. Gideon "was more in to getting my technique right." Wilma "made me train every day, which in the past I wasn't doing. And he was more into endurance work."
Under his guidance, in her second CARIFTA experience, Kineke earned her first medal, bronze. Excited though she was, all she could think of was moving to the top of the podium.
Under Keith Joseph, Kineke hopes to make a big impression this year. She knows what international competition is like, and understands how to prepare herself. So far, she's happy with the way her season is going, though she still feels the second half of her race needs work. With the Central American and Caribbean Junior Championships coming up ahead of the IAAF World Junior Championships in Grosseto, Kineke says she can run 52 seconds this year, and hopefully make the WJC final. On her current form, that's a real possibility, and if she gets there, she's surely not going to finish last.
Her future is in the USA, following Hazel-Ann and Tiandra to the National Collegiate Athletics Association. Kineke is on her way to the University of Iowa, according to published reports. It's a long way from Mesopotamia, but Kineke welcomes the thought of moving on to a higher level of competition. She says she's proud of what people like herself and thrower Adonson Shallow have accomplished with the facilities in SVG, but she's looking forward to moving on, and taking on the world.
Kineke Alexander
DOB: 21 02 1986
Progression:
2004 53.83
2003 54.93
2002 55.42
2001 57.54
Terry Finistere for the IAAF
