Olympic ath­lete Machel Ce­de­nio and cy­clist Jo­di Goodridge emerged the male and fe­male ath­lete of the year, re­spec­tive­ly, at the First Cit­i­zens Sports Foun­da­tion Youth awards cer­e­mo­ny, held at the Hy­att Re­gency, Trinidad, Port-of-Spain, on Fri­day.

Ce­de­nio, who was a re­serve on the T&T 4x400 me­tres re­lay team that won the bronze medal at the Lon­don Games, and placed fourth in the 400m fi­nal at the IAAF World Ju­nior Cham­pi­onships held in Barcelona, Spain, got the judges' nod for the top ac­co­lade.

Goodridge won favour with the pan­el for the team medal she helped bring home at the 2012 Pam Amer­i­can Ju­nior Cham­pi­onships in the sprint held in Guatemala City. In Guatemala, Goodridge al­so se­cured a bronze medal in the women's 500m time tri­al, while set­ting a na­tion­al record of 37.86 sec­onds. More re­cent­ly, Goodridge be­came the first fe­male T&T ath­lete to qual­i­fy for an elite event at the Pan Amer­i­can Cham­pi­onship, when she broke the na­tion­al women's record in the fly­ing 200m at the T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion's (TTCF) tri­als.

Goodridge went up against nom­i­nees, Kate Gor­don (karate), Kel­ly Ann Ar­rindell (sail­ing), Char­lotte Marie Knag­gs (squash), Chelsea James (ath­let­ics), and Kim­ber­lee John-Williams (swim­ming). Ce­de­nio al­so faced stiff chal­lenges from Je­re­my Solozano (crick­et), Dy­lan Carter (swim­ming) and Je­lani David­son (ten­nis).

At the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) sports awards held last month, Goodridge walked away with the ju­nior fe­male "Sports­woman of the Year" award.Fol­low­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion, Goodridge's fa­ther, Pe­ter Goodridge, who ac­cept­ed the award, shared that his daugh­ter al­ready had her sights set on the 2016 Olympics in Brazil, but be­fore that she in­tends to se­cure gold at this year's Pan Amer­i­can Cham­pi­onship.

Goodridge (Jo­di) was un­able to at­tend the cer­e­mo­ny due to an eye in­fec­tion, but her fa­ther ex­pressed hope that she would re­cov­er ful­ly in time for the Pan Am Cham­pi­onship."Jo­di's goal was al­ways to be the best fe­male cy­clist in T&T," Goodridge said. "She was off train­ing for a lit­tle while and the coach told her, 'Jo­di, we go­ing for it, be­cause it's nat­ur­al.'

She came out and she still broke the record. The next move is to con­tin­ue train­ing as hard as she can. We are look­ing to go oth­er games out­side the coun­try so she will com­pete with oth­er cy­clists where she will im­prove on her cy­cling and her time," he said.

Goodridge said his daugh­ter's out­stand­ing per­for­mances made him feel good, but he lament­ed that Jo­di's moth­er was not alive to see her shine.He un­der­scored his com­mit­ment as a sin­gle par­ent and chief sup­port­er for his daugh­ter in all her pos­i­tive en­deav­ours.

Ce­de­nio, dur­ing his post awards in­ter­view, said he was ho­n­oured to be nom­i­nat­ed for the award and ul­ti­mate­ly win."I re­al­ly wasn't ex­pect­ing it be­cause it had a lot of ath­letes who did good through­out the year. I prayed and I worked hard, so I guess I de­serve it. My next step is to work hard­er this year, break my per­son­al best... Make more na­tion­al teams. I am aim­ing for the World Games in Rus­sia. I can make the 4x400m team. That's my goal this year," he said.