WAL­TER AL­IBEY

T&T's Ju­nior cy­clists Tyler Cole and Jabari White­man were sched­uled to re­turn home yes­ter­day as Caribbean cham­pi­ons af­ter both picked up key medals at the Caribbean Ju­nior Road Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships in St Lu­cia at the week­end.

Cole, the on­ly ju­nior cy­clist to have won a medal for T&T at the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed two-day in­ter­na­tion­al cy­cling cham­pi­onship to mark the of­fi­cial open­ing of the Cy­cle­drome at Bal­main Cou­va last week­end, claim gold in the Road Time Tri­al for Ju­nior cy­clists at the Mil­len­ni­um High­way.

White­man, who achieved a mirac­u­lous feat by dip­ping be­low the five-minute time bar­ri­er at the Roger Smart Memo­r­i­al Time Tri­al around the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah three weeks ago, al­so se­cured gold medal for the Ju­ve­nile Men's Road Race as well as bronze in the Ju­ve­nile Men's Time Tri­al. The achieve­ments were even more spe­cial for White­man as it was his first out­ing at the cham­pi­onships.

Both head­ed a full-strength T&T team at the cham­pi­onship that in­clud­ed En­rique De Co­mar­mond, Zion Puli­do, Dar­rius Beck­les, Ron­nell Woods, Nathan Alexan­der and Sid­ney Joseph. The team left for St Lu­cia some three days af­ter the cham­pi­onship at Cou­va, leav­ing both Cole and White­man with lit­tle time to re­fo­cus on their re­gion­al op­po­nents. They will now be ex­pect­ed to change their fo­cus again, ahead of the Pan Amer­i­can Ju­nior Track Cham­pi­onhsip at the Cy­cle­drome in Cou­va.

Yes­ter­day rac­ing sec­re­tary at the T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion (TTCF) Gary Acos­ta said medals were ex­pect­ed from both White­man and Cole be­fore they per­for­mances at the re­gion­al cham­pi­onship based on their per­for­mances in T&T over the past few months.

He not­eds that al­though there may be the per­cep­tion that the young­sters didn't per­form as well as they were ex­pect­ed at the in­ter­na­tion­al meet here, the ex­pe­ri­ence turned out to be more of a learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence for them.

"They are both young cy­clists at 15 and 16 and they com­pet­ed against top in­ter­na­tion­al rid­ers from around the world, so though we may not have seen the ben­e­fit from it then, we are not see­ing how ben­e­fi­cial it was at the re­gion­al cham­pi­onship. I think we have a lot to look for­ward to at the Pan Am cham­pi­onship here" Acos­ta said.

Both cy­clists, he said, are now fo­cused on the Pan Am and are very con­fi­dent of do­ing well, so I hope the pub­lic will go out and sup­port them, Acos­ta added.