Jereem “The Dream” Richards will bid for his second World Athletics Indoor Championship Men’s 400 metres title at the 2026 edition of the global meet. World Indoors will be staged in Torun, Poland, starting on Friday.
Richards is among four athletes selected to represent Trinidad and Tobago in Torun. Leah Bertrand will compete in the Women’s 60m dash. Tyra Gittens-Spotsville challenges for honours in the Women’s long jump. And Nathan Cumberbatch flies the “Red, White and Black” in the Men’s 800m.
On February 13, in Arkansas, USA, Richards ran his first 400m race for 2026. He clocked 45.56 seconds.
At the 2022 edition of the global meet, held in Belgrade, Serbia, Richards grabbed 400m gold in 45 seconds flat—a championship record as well as a T&T indoor record —to become the country’s first-ever World Indoors champion
The all-time T&T World Indoors medal haul is eight—one gold, two silver, five bronze.
Richards has a share in one of those bronze medals. At the 2012 World Indoors meet in Istanbul, Turkey, the Point Fortin athlete teamed up with Lalonde Gordon, Renny Quow and Jarrin Solomon for Men’s 4x400m bronze in three minutes, 06.85 seconds. The clocking was a national indoor record.
At the 2016 World Indoors in Portland, Oregon, USA, Solomon, Gordon, Ade Alleyne-Forte and Deon Lendore bagged bronze in the Men’s 4×4 with a new national indoor record run—3:05.51.
There was further improvement to the T&T indoor record at the 2018 World Indoors meet in Birmingham, England, Lendore, Richards, Asa Guevara and Gordon clocking 3:02.52 for fourth spot in the final. The T&T quartet missed out on bronze by one-hundredth of a second.
Lendore, who died in a vehicular accident in 2022, secured three World Indoor Championship medals—individual 400m bronze in 2016 and 2018 and 4×400 bronze in 2016. A podium finish for Richards at the 2026 edition would see him joining Lendore as a three-time medallist at the global meet.
At the 2025 World Indoors in Nanjing, China, Gittens-Spotsville finished 12th in the Women’s long jump with a 6.36 metres leap. She has been in fine form this season, establishing a new T&T indoor record of 6.83m for sixth spot on the 2026 world indoor performance list.
Bertrand will make her World Athletics Indoor Championship debut in Torun. Her best 60m clocking this season is 7.19 seconds.
Cumberbatch is also a World Indoors debutant. On February 14, he clocked a personal best 1:45.64 in an outdoor 800m race in Perth, Australia.
The four T&T athletes are scheduled to leave for Poland tomorrow.
T&T TEAM
Men: Jereem Richards (400m), Nathan Cumberbatch (800m)
Women: Leah Bertrand (60m), Tyra Gittens-Spotsville (long jump)
Officials: Jehue Gordon (manager), Donavan Spotsville (coach), Nicole Fuentes-Charles (medical)
Kwame Laurence
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