Twenty-two-year-old middle distance campaigner Dennis Horatio ran the race of his life to defeat one of the athletes who inspired him to take the sport seriously, national long distance champion Cleveland Forde.
Horatio produced a sensation time — one minute, 55.9 seconds (1:55.9s) — to defeat Cleveland Thomas (1:56.20s) and defending Central American and Caribbean 5000m bronze medallist Cleveland Forde (1:56.06s), respectively. The race began with such blistering pace that a third of the starters dropped out during the final lap.
Dennis Horatio
The race had three different groups of athletes during the first lap — the race leaders who sprinted out ahead in ‘rabbit’ fashion (deliberate pace setters who do not usually intend to finish), the ‘big bunch’, and those pacing the big bunch. Thomas was leading the big bunch and constantly gaining ground on the race rabbits, who seemed destined to tire, while Horatio was strategically positioned a few metres behind Thomas.
Forde, who is respected as one of the Caribbean’s fastest sprinting long distance runners, did not seem to be bothered by the ‘fancy gallops’ of the other athletes in the early stages of the race, and was in the third group of runners. Forde gradually made up pace; but while he was gaining ground, Horatio was making his move on Thomas.
Since the MSC ground has a 300m track, the last lap meant little room for error and ample opportunity for aggressive moves towards finishing strong. Horatio took control of the race with just over 200m to go, and sprinted the final turn like his life depending on it.
Forde seemed to have waited too long to engage his sprinting faculties, and settled for a close third place behind Thomas. Horatio, who was the understudy of former long distance champion Colin Mercurius, played down the victory against the former South American 23 champion.
“None of us don’t really compete in that event (800m), but I just go out there and do my best… and, well they said nobody never really run 1:55 in Guyana on grass in a long time, so it feel good,” Horatio said.
Even Lyndon Wilson, who has been coaching Horatio for close to a decade, said that he was surprised.
“It was an excellent performance from Dennis. Even though people know him as and 1,500 and 5,000m runner, he has won a few 800m races before. Nobody really expected him to win. Even I was surprised; I thought that maybe he would have placed in the top three, but I didn’t expect that he would win,” Wilson said. For his remarkable efforts, Horatio won Gy$50,000, while Gy$30,000 and GY$20,000 had been promised to second and third place finishers, since organisers had anticipated that that race would have been a thriller. The only other race that offered cash prizes was the Women’s 200m, which was won by Aliann Pompey.
