The trio of Nicholas Paul, Njisane Phillips, and Makaira Wal­lace will lead a large T&T cy­cling team to the com­ing Pan Amer­i­can Track Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships in San­ti­a­go, Chile, from Feb­ru­ary 16-22.

De­spite a le­gal bat­tle that in­flu­enced the team’s se­lec­tion, the T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion, led by Rowe­na Williams, is at­tempt­ing to break new ground by hav­ing a team con­test the team pur­suit for the first time. This event will be con­test­ed by the quar­tet of Ak­il Camp­bell, Tariq Woods, Liam Trepte, and Ja­di­an Neaves.

Woods sealed the TTCF Road Chal­lenge Cri­teri­um at Tamana In-Tek Park in 2024; Neaves cap­tured the main race at the in­au­gur­al Raiders Cy­cling Cri­teri­um Clas­sic last year; and Trepte, the win­ner of the Pe­ter De Sil­ver Memo­r­i­al Om­ni­um in 2024, and Camp­bell, who be­came the first en­durance rid­er to win a gold medal at an in­ter­na­tion­al event in 2024, will car­ry the bur­den of a good per­for­mance in the team pur­suit for T&T.

The quar­tet all got dis­cre­tionary picks af­ter none of them made the qual­i­fy­ing stan­dard at the TTCF Tri­als last week­end at the Na­tion­al Cy­cling Cen­tre (NCC) in Bal­main, Cou­va.

The 13-mem­ber team will al­so con­test the team sprint for both men and women. The trio of Wal­lace, Phoebe Sandy and Kyra Williams will com­pete in the team sprint and will lat­er con­test the oth­er sprints—match sprint and keirin, while the quar­ter of Njisane Phillip, a two-time Olympian, Zion Puli­do, who was once con­sid­ered the fastest starter for T&T in the sprint lo­cal­ly, Kwe­si Browne, who re­turns from in­jury, and Nicholas Paul pa­rade, who set a world record in the fly­ing 200 me­tre sprint at 9.100 sec­onds at the Elite Pan Amer­i­can Track Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships in Coach­abam­ba, Bo­livia, will at­tempt to take the gold medal in the men’s team sprint.

Phillip, a four-time Olympian and Paul and oth­ers will then go af­ter sil­ver­ware in the match sprint and the keirin events.

Fol­low­ing the Pan Am Cy­cling Games in Sep­tem­ber last year, the elite cy­clists, which in­clud­ed Phillip, Alexi Ramirez, Paul, and Wal­lace, de­mand­ed the same team be se­lect­ed for the next month’s Pan Am Cham­pi­onships, as time did not per­mit for fresh tri­als, which were re­quest­ed by the clubs.

The rid­ers in­sist­ed that any de­ci­sion that went against a 90-day pe­ri­od for cy­clists to ready them­selves for in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion was a breach of the se­lec­tion pol­i­cy, which had been used for many years. How­ev­er, af­ter ar­gu­ments by both sides, the courts de­cid­ed that tri­als be held on Jan­u­ary 17 at the NCC.

At the tri­als, though, on­ly a few rid­ers made the qual­i­fy­ing stan­dards, en­abling a num­ber of rid­ers to be giv­en dis­cre­tionary picks.

T&T CY­CLING TEAM

Makaira Wal­lace, Phoebe Sandy, Kyra Williams, Njisane Phillip, Kwe­si Browne, Nicholas Paul, Zion Puli­do, Alexi Ramirez, Te­niel Camp­bell, Ak­il Camp­bell, Tariq Woods, Liam Trepte, and Ja­di­an Neaves.

Me­chan­ics: Kevin Tin­to, Eli­jah Greene