WAL­TER AL­IBEY

wal­ter.al­ibey@guardian.co.tt

Cy­clist Te­niel Camp­bell re­turned to the UCI World Cy­cling Cen­tre in Ag­ile, Switzer­land on Mon­day, with in­ten­tions of qual­i­fy­ing for the Olympic Games in Tokyo Japan and se­cur­ing a pro­fes­sion­al con­tract with a cy­cling team on the World Tour.

The lanky 21 year old who rose to fame with a his­toric string of per­for­mances at the 2018 Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean Games in Ju­ly, where she copped four medals; three bronze and one gold in the Scratch, the Om­ni­um, the in­di­vid­ual pur­suit and the road race, re­spec­tive­ly, has less than a year in to make her dream come through- (Oc­to­ber 10, 2018- Oc­to­ber 10, 2019).

The un­ranked TT rid­er will at­tempt to gar­ner valu­able UCI points if she is to earn an Olympic qual­i­fy­ing berth in the Kilo­me­tre Time Tri­al and the Road Race.

Her stint at the UCI cen­tre for the past sev­en months has helped her de­vel­op her skill among the main pelo­ton and has al­so en­abled her to read races bet­ter.

But she now faces the re­al­i­ty of a long, dif­fi­cult sea­son in which she must fin­ish among the top 100 cy­clists in both the time tri­al and the road race to be the first TT women rid­er to earn an Olympic spot. And de­spite not hav­ing a sin­gle point to her name as yet, she in­tends to stay pos­i­tive.

"I know what­ev­er I check now will not be ac­cu­rate or re­al be­cause I have not start­ed ac­cu­mu­lat­ing points as yet, so I would not beat-up or fight up with that rank­ing right now. When I start do­ing races, I would know how much work I will have to do," Camp­bell said, soon be­fore whisked out for Switzer­land.

Her Olympic cam­paign will be­gin at the Pan Amer­i­can Cham­pi­onship and the World Cham­pi­onship to be held lat­er this year, and a top 10 fin­ish in both events will be suf­fi­cient.

Apart from these events, how­ev­er, Camp­bell can al­so se­cure cru­cial points at the UCI-sanc­tioned Class 1 and 2 at the Pan Am Games.

La­belled the first fe­male Dou­ble Caribbean Women’s Road Cham­pi­on, the first fe­male CAC Gold Medal cy­clist, and the first fe­male cy­clist to re­ceive the Hum­ming­bird Medal (Sil­ver), Camp­bell in­tends to ex­e­cute on what she learnt while at the UCI Cen­tre, and hope it brings her the re­sults she is hop­ing for.

Her de­sire to earn a pro con­tract will al­so be­come a re­al­i­ty once she qual­i­fies for the Olympic Games, she be­lieves.