T&T's road cycling king, Emile Abraham, defied the odds when he rode his way to a silver medal in a bunch finish with four other riders at the 21st Central American and Caribbean (CAC) Games in the men's 145.3-kilometre road race in Lajas, Mayaguez, Puerto Rico yesterday. The 36-year-old Abraham's silver was one of two medals earned on the day for T&T as taekwondo's Dorian Alexander, got bronze in the men's under-68kg class to carry the overall tally to a record 24 medals (six gold, seven silver 11 bronze), three more than four years ago in Colombia. Three years ago, Abraham produced a heroic effort to win a silver medal at the Rio de Janeiro Pan American Games road race despite the best efforts of the South and Central American teams.
Yesterday, Abraham again showed he had the courage and racing instincts to take on the well co-ordinated teamwork of Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela and beat them at their own game to finish in a group of riders in three hours, 30.51 minutes for silver. The winner was Venezuela's Honorio Machado while Mexican, Luis Macias took bronze, all in the same time. In the men's under-68kg taekwondo class, T&T's Dorian Alexander fought his way to a bronze medal competing at the Coliseo Buga Abreu, Isabela. With a place in the gold medal contest at stake Alexander was beaten at the semifinal hurdle by Dominican Republic's Jean Jhohanny 6-2.
Earlier on, 26-year-old Alexander blew away Nelson Zavala of Nicaragua 24-2 in the round-of-16 and then secured a 10-4 quarterfinal win over Manuel Carrion of Puerto Rico. T&T's other taekwondo medal hopefuls, Kevin Lee-A-Ping, Lenn Hypolite and former medalist, Cheryl-Ann Sankar did not survive their first opponents. Venezuela's Mario Leal beat Lee-A-Ping 17-4 in an under-58 kg contest and Rudford Hamon of Haiti defeated Hypolite 6-1 in the under-80kg clash, both in the round-of-16 while Doris Patino of Colombia blanked veteran, Sankar, 5-0 in their under-57kg quarterfinal.
