It was a clas­sic case of a coun­try boy de­fy­ing the odds to be world ac­claim.

Nicholas Paul's achieve­ment of the world record in the fly­ing 200 me­tres event at the just con­clud­ed Elite Pan Amer­i­can Con­ti­nen­tal Cham­pi­onships in Bo­livia last week has earned him and the mem­bers of the T&T cy­cling team- Quin­cy Alexan­der, Keron Bram­ble and Kwe­si Browne, a trip to the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade in Port-of-Spain on Fri­day where they were cel­e­brat­ed.

Paul, for his record of 9.100 earned him con­grat­u­la­to­ry mes­sages from sev­er­al world-renowned sports­men, Amer­i­can Mar­ty Noth­stein, Shane Kel­ly of Aus­tralia and T&T bat­ting ge­nius Bri­an Lara, among oth­ers, as well as a plaque from the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion and its May­or Joel Mar­tinez.

Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs Sham­fa Cud­joe said the gov­ern­ment, in line with its re­ward and in­cen­tive pro­gramme, will en­sure that suc­cess­ful cy­clists from the Pan Am will re­ceive their cash in­cen­tives at a lat­er date.

Apart from Paul's world record per­for­mance, which even­tu­al­ly led to the gold medal in the match sprint event in a new Pan Am record, the sprint team al­so claimed gold in the open­ing event, fin­ished just out­side the world record.

Bram­ble al­so pro­duced a break-through per­for­mance in the keirin event which saw just miss­ing out on a medal.

Min­is­ter Cud­joe told the gath­er­ing she was giv­en just two min­utes to be at the event, but she laud­ed the rid­ers for their achieve­ments, de­scrib­ing it as an out­stand­ing ac­com­plish­ment. She not­ed it was through the achieve­ments of our sports­men and women that our twin-is­land Re­pub­lic be­came known around the world.

Ac­cord­ing to Cud­joe, the ath­letes are a re­minder to all of us, that we must do our bit to make T&T proud. She sin­gled Paul for his com­mit­ment and ded­i­ca­tion at such a young age, to break a world record and make the coun­try proud.

Port-of-Spain May­or Joel Mar­tinez said not every day you go out and break a world record, but they had an­oth­er cham­pi­on in their midst. "It takes the pain, it takes de­ter­mi­na­tion, it takes en­durance, it takes skill, it takes fam­i­ly life, the peo­ple in your vil­lage, the peo­ple in your com­mu­ni­ty, the peo­ple in your coun­try, it takes every­body to bring home a medal or a world record for a coun­try as small as T&T. Aren't we an im­pres­sive peo­ple?