National men’s 400m champion and World Athletics Championship finalist Sean Bailey said his season’s best 44.93 seconds for third in the 400m at the Ostrava Golden Spike on Tuesday is “a step in the right direction”.

The meet, staged in Ostrava, Czechia, is a World Athletics Continental Tour Gold meeting.

Bailey was one of four Jamaicans who took part in the meet where Ryiem Forde was second in the men’s 100m, Andrew Hudson was second in the men’s 200m and Christania Williams finished eighth in the women’s 100m.

Both Forde and Hudson finished behind Canadian Andre de Grasse who ran season’s bests 10.10 seconds (0.0m/s) and 20.09 seconds (0.4m/s) to win the sprint double.

Bailey, the two-time national champion who was racing on the European circuit for the first time and was competing over the quarter-mile for only the third time this season, told the Jamaica Observer, “It was a good run, my first time competing in Europe and it was a long trip, [but] it was a season’s best, we will always take that and go back to the drawing board.”

He also said his attention would switch to getting ready for the Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association (JAAA) National Championships set for late June as he seeks to make it to his second Olympic Games.

Bailey’s training partner, Steven Gardiner of The Bahamas, ran a season’s best 44.39 seconds to win while Belgium’s Alexander Doom ran a personal best 44.44 seconds.

Forde, a men’s 4x100m relay bronze medallist from last year’s World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Hungary, ran 10.17 seconds to edge Olympic champion Lamont Marcell Jacobs of Italy who clocked 10.19 seconds.

Hudson, the two-time national champion and World Athletics Championships finalist, got off to a fast start in the men’s 200m and led coming off the curve before he was caught and passed by de Grasse and finished second in 20.56 seconds with Great Britain’s former Jamaica College runner Netheneel Mitchell-Blake placing third in 20.63 seconds.

Williams was timed in 11.64 seconds (0.7m/s) as Poland’s World Indoor Championships gold medallist Ewa Swoboda won her first outdoor race in 11.05 seconds, followed by Gina Mariam Bass Bittaye of Gambia 11.14 seconds and Zaynab Dosso of Italy, 11.18 seconds.