Nicholas Clarke

Pan Amer­i­can Track Cham­pi­onships Kilo­me­tre gold medal­list Christo­pher Sel­l­i­er has been tipped to break the ex­ist­ing Ari­ma Velo­drome record when the Na­tion­al Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships be­gin to­mor­row night at 7 pm.

Sel­l­i­er set a new Pan Am record (1:00.9) in Mex­i­co two weeks ago, fin­ish­ing well ahead of for­mer na­tion­al cy­clist Michael Phillips's mark of 1:07.1. Speak­ing to the Guardian yes­ter­day, the 24-year-old said that his fo­cus would be on chal­leng­ing him­self. "I'm not go­ing to think about the record," he said. "I'm just go­ing to be do­ing my best and if I break it then it will be a bonus." His Pan Amer­i­can team­mates Azik­we Kel­lar and Njisane Phillips will al­so be com­pet­ing in the Kilo­me­tre and Sel­l­i­er said he was look­ing for­ward to see­ing what hap­pens.

"It's al­ways fun to go up against those guys since it cre­ates a com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment," he said. "Every­body has been in in­tense train­ing over the last week so I think it will come down to who's bet­ter on the day." This year's Cham­pi­onships will mark the first time that the Om­ni­um is con­test­ed in T&T. A mul­ti­ple race event, it fea­tures a 200m Fly­ing Start Time Tri­al, a 5km Scratch Race, a 3km In­di­vid­ual Pur­suit, a 15km Points Race and a 1km Time Tri­al.

An­oth­er first will be the use of a ful­ly com­put­erised tim­ing sys­tem, equipped with a 'pho­to fin­ish' cam­era, which was re­cent­ly pur­chased by the T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion for a re­port­ed $810,000.

The Cham­pi­onships will be spread out over six rac­ing days from Thurs­day to June 6. Al­so lin­ing up in var­i­ous events will be Eli­jah Greene, Mark Co­dring­ton and broth­ers Adam and Joshua Alexan­der. The In­di­vid­ual Pur­suit, which takes place on Sun­day at 2pm, will serve as a Qual­i­fi­er for Ju­ly's CAC Games in Puer­to Ri­co.

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