Athletics-Marie clocks personal best over 400 metres |23 August 2004

In the race, his second international outing this year, Marie clearly suffered from stage
fright inside a packed stadium and could not concentrate on getting his one-lap race going.

The anxiety of the Olympic Games, the desire to run fast to get the Seychelles record, the crowd and the emotions clearly took its toll on Marie running in lane two of the fourth heat.

Despite all that, Marie took sixth place out of six competitors, clocking a personal best of 48.23 seconds to improve on his old best of 48.42 seconds achieved at the World Junior Athletics Championship in Kingston, Jamaica in 2002.

"I'm very disappointed about my race. I wanted the Seychelles record and did not get it. I did not even come close to it. To be frank, I was not focused on the race. I was beaten before the start and did not run my race. This is because of a lack of international competitions. There was too much pressure on me inside a big and packed stadium. This
is the Olympic Games and I really felt the pressure," said 21-year-old Marie, who went into the race with the slowest time among the other five runners in his heat.

It is to note that a seventh runner, Congolese Christian Lezin Elongo Ngoyikonda, did not take the start.

Despite not being happy with his performance, Marie took 54th position overall among the 61 runners who started and finished their races in the eight heats.

He was faster than Kuwaiti Fawzi Al Shammari (48.25), El Salvadorian Takeshi Fujiwara (48.46), Brazilian Anderson Santos (48.77), Mauritanian Youba Hmeida (49.18), Danilson Ricciuli of Guinea-Bissau (49:27), Saeed Al Adhreai of Yemen (49.39) and Somalian Abdulla Mohamed Hussein (51.52).

Kenyan Victor Kibet, running in heat number six, did not finish the race.

American Derrick Brew, 20, won Marie's heat in 45.41 seconds.

The top 16 runners made it to Saturday night's three semifinals with the top eight qualifying for today's final.

Asked if he felt his record of 47.08 seconds set in 1993 was under attack in last Friday's race, coach Adam replied:
"I knew it was going to be difficult for Evans (Marie) to break the record. But I at least expected him to run below 48 seconds. He made the mistakes of running slowly in the first 100 metres and when he saw his opponents ahead of him he could not respond as he was under a lot of pressure. But he has the ability to beat the record with good training and more high level competitions."

G.G.