An elated Tyrone Smith kept his medal hopes alive after reaching the Olympic final of the men’s long jump yesterday.Facing elimination, Smith reached back and unleashed his best jump of the season, 7.97 metres, to book his place in tomorrow’s final at the Olympic Stadium.With leaps of 7.73 metres and 7.75 metres on his first two attempts, Smith had plenty of work to do in his third and final jump, admitting it was plain old willpower rather than technique that saw him through.“Obviously it was really stressful getting it down to that final jump,” said Smith.“That last one I just decided to forget about all that technical stuff and just go and jump, and I was able to pull it out.”Smith revealed the crushing disappointment of failing to reach the Olympic final in Beijing four years ago also spurred him on ahead of his ‘do-or-die’ final attempt.“I was thinking to myself ‘Tyrone you have never made it through, ever, and this will be the perfect time. It’s not like they’re asking you to jump 8.20.’“I knew that if I jumped over 7.95 I’d be in there. I’ve done that so many times with bad jumps from behind the board so I knew I could do it. I just felt it was set up for me to make it through.”There will be little time for Smith to savour the moment with tomorrow’s final taking place at 2.50pm (Bermuda time).And he stressed he would not be satisfied unless he finishes on the podium at London 2012.“Hopefully the nerves will kick in again tomorrow, I know they will,” said Smith, who won gold at the CAC Games two years ago in Puerto Rico with a personal best of 8.22 metres.“I’ll be starting over from scratch and I’m not satisfied yet. I’ll not be satisfied until I bring that gold back to Bermy.“Each jump I learnt something because I’ve been having a lot of developmental practice and I hadn’t been able to put that into competition.“I was able to do that today and qualify at the same time. It was a big learning experience and tomorrow is going to be even better.”The automatic qualifying distance was 8.10 metres but only two athletes, Brazilian Mauro Vinicius Da Silva and Marquise Goodwin of the USA, reached that with jumps of 8.11.Only six athletes jumped over eight metres and reigning Olympic champion Irving Saladino of Panama fouled out with no jump measured in qualifying.“The wind was really bad for us, it was really hard to get on the board and get timed up,” added Smith.“The crowd was crazy, though. Although there were more spectators in Beijing, the Great British people are known to be track and field fans and they were way louder, so that was pretty cool.”