Clydeen Mc­Don­ald

Three-time Pan Amer­i­can Ju­nior gold medal­list Njisane Phillip ad­mits that he is yet to ful­ly ab­sorb the mag­ni­tude of his ac­com­plish­ments at the Pan Am Ju­nior Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships held in Mex­i­co, last week. Speak­ing at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port where he and the rest of his his­to­ry mak­ing team were the re­cip­i­ents of a grand wel­come, Phillip said, "It didn't re­al­ly hit me yet. I know that I want­ed to do well but noth­ing could have pre­pared me for this feel­ing that I have right now."

He point­ed out that he used his dis­ap­point­ing per­for­mance at last year's Cham­pi­onship in Ecuador as a ma­jor mo­ti­vat­ing fac­tor. His in­ex­pe­ri­ence saw him re­turn with a sil­ver medal in the Match Sprint and a bronze in the Keirin. Phillip added, "Last year I was not re­al­ly pre­pared in terms of ex­pe­ri­ence so I got squeezed out of the medals which I should have had." He point­ed to lo­cal events such as the East­er Grand Prix in May and Bea­con Cy­cling Fes­ti­val in June as be­ing vi­tal in him get­ting ready for the Cham­pi­onships.

"This year I start­ed my prepa­ra­tion a bit ear­li­er. I fo­cused on rid­ing against ex­pe­ri­enced guys like El­isha Greene and Chris Sel­l­i­er, try­ing to get a feel of how they as pro­fes­sion­als raced. "Com­ing up against them in lo­cal com­pe­ti­tions ear­li­er this year and oth­er guys when I went to the USA for train­ing, re­al­ly helped." Phillip, 18, who ped­alled to gold medals in the Match Sprint, one kilo­me­tre Time Tri­al and the Keirin as well as help­ing T&T to win a bronze in the Team Sprint al­so, in­di­cat­ed that the sup­port from his team­mates was al­so a huge fac­tor in his great per­for­mances.

"As a team we re­al­ly sup­port­ed each oth­er over the last few days. Every morn­ing, guys who didn't even have to race on some days, were get­ting up be­fore 6 am to sup­port those who did, at the track. That was a ma­jor boost and that team spir­it was great for every­one's con­fi­dence." Oth­er mem­bers of T&T's bronze medal win­ning team were Tireef Smart and Quin­cy Alexan­der. Alexan­der, 15, is T&T's youngest ever par­tic­i­pant at the Pan Am Ju­niors and is al­so this coun­try's youngest ever medal­ist at the Cham­pi­onships.

An­oth­er ma­jor ac­com­plish­ment at the cham­pi­onship came from Varun Ma­haraj in the Points Race where he be­came the first na­tion­al cy­clist to com­plete the 72-lap event. Phillip, will next be in ac­tion against the world's best at the Ju­nior World Cham­pi­onships sched­uled for Au­gust 11 in Moscow, Rus­sia.