Your approach works fine, just start with negative first moment of time: \begin{equation} \sup_{x \in \mathbb{R}^{n}}| \nabla_{x} u(t,x)| \leq \frac{C}{\sqrt{T}} \sup_{x \in \mathbb{R}^{n}} |u(t-T,x)| ,\quad t\le 0,\ T>0. \end{equation}