T&T's eight-mem­ber cy­cling team will trav­el to the Na­tion­al Sports Cen­tre Velo­drome in Min­neso­ta, USA from dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tions to­day to be­gin a three-week train­ing camp to pre­pare for the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) Games in Mayag�ez Puer­to Ri­co from Ju­ly 17-Au­gust 1. Five of the team mem­bers (Christo­pher Sel­l­i­er, Njisane Phillip, Haseem McLean, Mark Co­dring­ton and Joshua Alexan­der) will leave from Pi­ar­co with team man­agers Gre­go­ry D'An­drade and Joseph Charles-Walk­er while Azik­we Kel­lar, Adam Alexan­der and Emile Abra­ham are al­ready in the USA. The team will be train­ing un­der Amer­i­can coach and dou­ble Olympic medal­list Erin Hartwell, who will be ar­riv­ing at the Velo­drome from Mex­i­co City where he coached T&T's Ju­nior Pan Amer­i­can team.

In May, T&T's Se­nior Pan Amer­i­can team spent ten days at the Home De­pot Cen­tre in Los An­ge­les where its had ac­cess to a 250m track. The in­vest­ment paid off as Sel­l­i­er set a new Pan Amer­i­can record and won the gold in the kilo­me­tre then teamed up with Kel­lar and Phillip to set a new meet record and win the bronze in the team sprint. Phillip closed the tour­na­ment with a sil­ver medal in the match sprint. Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, D'An­drade said that with the in­tro­duc­tion of the high per­for­mance train­ing camps in the USA, T&T cy­cling was on the verge of a new era."This is the first time that we have come up with such a de­tailed plan for a train­ing camp," he said. "Over the years, our teams lacked op­por­tu­ni­ties like these and our re­sults at the Pan Am Games have shown what a dif­fer­ence they can make. We're go­ing to be see­ing im­prove­ment over a long pe­ri­od of time."

D'An­drade said there were not any lo­cal fa­cil­i­ties to prop­er­ly pre­pare cy­clists for cer­tain in­ter­na­tion­al events. "We're rac­ing on a 250m out­door track in Puer­to Ri­co which is a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent ball game," he said. "The tracks in Skin­ner Park and the Ari­ma Velo­drome are like di­nosaurs in com­par­i­son since they are so out­dat­ed. The track in Min­neso­ta is ide­al for our prepa­ra­tions and it will make a world of a dif­fer­ence." He said af­ter eight years of plan­ning, con­struc­tion was due to be­gin on a 250m track in the Mu­cu­rapo area over the next few months. The camp will be the first time that T&T's en­durance rid­ers (Co­dring­ton, Abra­ham and the Alexan­der broth­ers) have joined up for high per­for­mance train­ing.

Sel­l­i­er, who will make up the sprint team with Kel­lar, Phillip and McLean, said that Hartwell's peo­ple skills set him apart from oth­er coach­es. "Dur­ing rac­ing time he knows how to speak to the rid­ers and how to mo­ti­vate them," he said. "In every­thing like that, he's the ide­al per­son for the sit­u­a­tion. I've nev­er met any­body like that." He said he was look­ing for­ward to the next three weeks which he felt it would bring out the best in him. "It gives us more mo­ti­va­tion be­cause train­ing in T&T can be a has­sle," he said. "I don't like go­ing on the Velo­drome to train and when go out on the road you al­ways stand the chance of be­ing bounced down. Go­ing to this nice track in Min­neso­ta will do the guys a lot of good just to be in that en­vi­ron­ment."