Henry barely misses out on final at World Champs

National athlete Eldred Henry has failed to advance to the final of the Men’s Shot-Put event in the 2019 IAAF World Championships in Doha, Qatar on Thursday, October 3.

Needing a throw of 20.90 metres or better to automatically qualify for the final, Henry threw 19.31 metres in his first attempt, fouled his second, and landed 20.13 metres on his final attempt.

That performance saw Henry finishing 11th in Group A of the competition and 21st of the overall 35 competitors.

Speaking after the event, Henry relived some of the moments that possibly led to him falling short of his goal and said he will use the opportunity to perform stronger in his future competitions.

“Felt good going into it. I fouled my best throw in the second round based on a simple mistake — I off-balanced. Was not the way I wanted to make my first World Championships appearance but you just have to learn the lessons and move on,” Henry stated.

He further said the long intervals between his warm-ups and his throws was another factor which saw him not performing to his full potential.

“The warm-up was pretty good. The last warm-up that I took, I was pretty confident that I would get me over the qualification line. But during the calm, things didn’t go as planned. There were six guys ahead of me after I took my last warm-up. It’s a big meet so they have a lot of guys who were sitting and waiting for them to go, so it’s a lot of factors too.”

Henry will be taking a break from any further competitions for the remainder of the season and plans to improve his performances next year.

The BVI’s last hope of attaining a World Championships medal now lies on long jumper Chantel Malone. Malone will be entering her event decorated with two gold medals from last August — one in the recent Pan American Games in Peru and the other in the Meeting Madrid 2019 event in Spain.

Malone is expected to compete on Saturday, October 5, at 10:50 am local time.