Nicholas Paul de­liv­ered a dogged dis­play on the bike to se­cure the bronze medal for T&T in the men’s keirin fi­nal of the UCI Track World Cup in Ni­lai, Malaysia Sat­ur­day. How­ev­er, his com­pa­tri­ot Makaira Wal­lace did not get be­yond the round of 1/16th in the women’s sprint.

Con­test­ing a huge­ly com­pet­i­tive field that con­sist­ed of world cham­pi­on Har­rie Lavrey­sen of the Nether­lands, the Asian Games cham­pi­on Mo­hammed Az­izul­has­ni Awang, French­man Ray­al Helal, Ger­man Hen­ric Hack­mann, and Japan’s Mi­na­to Nakaishi con­firmed the T&T rid­er’s need to pro­duce some­thing spe­cial to be among the podi­um.

How­ev­er, as the derny took the front po­si­tion, Paul set­tled for the back of the pack with Lavrey­sen some three spots ahead of him and the Asian cham­pi­on even fur­ther ahead. But the derny’s ex­it prompt­ed Paul to ad­just quick­ly.

Paul, who once held the record for the fly­ing 200-me­tre sprint at 9.100 sec­onds, which he set on Sep­tem­ber 6th, 2019, at the Elite Pan Amer­i­can Track Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships in Cochabam­ba, Bo­livia, made an im­me­di­ate move with three laps to go as he at­tempt­ed to chase Hack­mann, who al­so made ear­ly move­ments to get ahead of the field, in­to a medal po­si­tion.

With a lap to go, he caught Hack­man ahead of the field, but he lat­er found him­self smack in the midst of a des­per­ate bunch seek­ing the top fin­ish. Still, it was Paul in front as the rid­ers en­tered the fi­nal stretch to the fin­ish line, but Paul was just pipped for the win by Awang, who took the vic­to­ry and the re­sult­ing gold medal, with Lavrey­sen tak­ing the sil­ver medal in sec­ond.

The trio of Nakaishi, Helal, and Hack­mann com­plet­ed the top six po­si­tions in fourth, fifth and sixth, re­spec­tive­ly. Mean­while, in the bat­tle for po­si­tions 7-12, Hol­land’s Ti­j­men Van Loon sealed the top spot, with Mar­tin Cech­man of the Czech Re­pub­lic tak­ing the run­ner-up eighth spot over­all and Colom­bia’s David Cris­t­ian Fontal­vo in third for the over­all ninth po­si­tion.

Ear­li­er, T&T’s Makaira Wal­lace reached the 1/16th round of the women’s sprint but was boot­ed out by arch ri­val Ste­fany Flo­rez Cuadra­do of Colom­bia in heat 1 of the match sprint.

Twen­ty-eight rid­ers faced the qual­i­fy­ing flight 200 me­ters ear­li­er, with Wal­lace tak­ing the fi­nal spot in a time of 10.993 sec­onds. How­ev­er, as she ad­vanced to the 1/16 round, she could not get the bet­ter of Cuadra­do, who was fifth in the qual­i­fiers in 10.457 and be­low Em­ma Fin­u­cane, who pro­duced the fastest time at 10.130 sec­onds.