WAL­TER AL­IBEY

Six­teen-year-old An­tho­ny Co­zi­er raced his way to the top of the ros­trum at Sat­ur­day's first Par­adise Box Cart Chal­lenge, dri­ving a sim­ple box cart made out of wood, BMX wheels and some met­al.His vic­to­ry won him and an­oth­er mem­ber of the Down­ward Dawg team a ful­ly-paid trip to Austin, Texas, next week, to en­joy the For­mu­la One USA Grand Prix, cour­tesy Hott93, Hy­per Malt and Shell Lu­bri­cants.

Tyler Ram­per­sads­ingh placed sec­ond and Justin Wort­man, third in the grav­i­ty rac­ers class.School teams from Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do and Queen's Roy­al Col­lege (QRC) were promi­nent in the old school/tra­di­tion­al box cart class as their box carts were built with roller bear­ings, and not bi­cy­cle wheels. They placed sec­ond and third, re­spec­tive­ly, in their class for schools.

Af­ter the chal­lenge event co-or­di­na­tor An­dre Crichlow said, "The beau­ty about this sport is that every­one has the same pow­er...grav­i­ty. You can­not ap­ply more pow­er to grav­i­ty or make it go faster. What mat­ters here is how you de­sign your cart and that doesn't re­quire a lot."

An­oth­er co-or­di­na­tor Nik­ki John­son said, "This is just the be­gin­ning. Our vi­sion is to in­spire stu­dents and young peo­ple to ap­ply their aca­d­e­m­ic ex­pe­ri­ence es­pe­cial­ly in the fields of sci­ence, en­gi­neer­ing, tech­nol­o­gy and even art to a prac­ti­cal project like build­ing a box cart. Who knows, five years from now, we might have a Trinidad and To­ba­go rep­re­sen­ta­tive in an in­ter­na­tion­al Box Cart der­by."

Or­gan­is­ers are al­so chal­leng­ing stu­dents at schools to con­tin­ue us­ing their cre­ativ­i­ty to build box carts.Ac­cord­ing to or­gan­is­ers, "This can eas­i­ly be the gen­e­sis of en­gi­neer­ing de­sign ca­reers, mar­ket­ing, project man­age­ment and ar­ti­san ca­reers. The next evo­lu­tion of ve­hi­cle de­sign can find its in­spi­ra­tion from with­in one of these events."

They added, "The cur­rent lead­ers in the au­to­mo­tive in­dus­try all have a vest­ed in­ter­est in "box cart" de­sign.They have all en­tered their de­signs in in­ter­na­tion­al ver­sions of the event.Those in­ter­na­tion­al events can be the fu­ture des­ti­na­tion for our lo­cal win­ners and vice ver­sa. We hope in the fu­ture to see the in­ter­na­tion­al ver­sions of our "Par­adise" ver­sions com­pete here in Trinidad and To­ba­go."

Hun­dreds of sup­port­ers packed the Jean Pierre Com­plex to catch a glimpse of a ter­rapin which is a ve­hi­cle close­ly re­sem­bling an F1 car, as well as a demon­stra­tion of go-karts by Evo­lu­tion Kart­ing.