ISTANBUL, Turkey – Texas A&M sprinter Demetrius Pinder earned a silver medal in the 400 meters at the IAAF World Championships on Saturday running a time of 45.34 seconds as another Aggie sprinter in the final, Tabarie Henry, claimed fourth place in 45.96.

Pinder, representing his native Bahamas, started in prime position from lane five and had defending World Indoor champ Chris Brown, also of the Bahamas, in lane four with Aggie teammate Henry, representing U.S. Virgin Islands, in three. The reigning World Outdoor champion, Grenada’s Kirani James, was stationed in lane one.

However, Nery Brenes of Costa Rica was the surprise winner as he set a championship record of 45.11 seconds after finishing fourth in the past two World Indoor meets. Brenes bettered the meet record of 45.26 set by American Butch Reynolds in 1993 when the World Indoor was held in Toronto.

Brenes led the field from the break while Pinder slid into second place ahead of Brown. Henry was fourth just ahead of James. On the backstretch of the second lap, Pinder maintained second, but was unable to close any ground on Brenes, who has an outdoor career best of 44.65.

Off the final curve Pinder cruised in for the silver while Henry challenged for bronze. Brown, though, claimed the last medal at 45.90 with Henry finishing fourth in 45.96. James placed sixth in 46.21.

“I thought I did the best I could coming out of lane three,” noted Henry. “I decided to stay in fourth off the break and then try to kick and get up into the top three. The plan almost worked. The top three guys speed to the break and I followed closely. Then I tried to out lean Chris at the finish and just missed a medal.

“It feels good to have a training partner get a medal at Worlds. We train hard together and we just wanted to bring back at least one medal back to College Station. We still have a long season left with outdoors and the Olympics this summer.”

An odd occurrence had the entire field finishing in the opposite order of their lane assignments.