​Colom­bia’s elite duo of Kevin Quin­tero and Cris­t­ian Or­te­ga will head­line this year’s "Car­ni­val of Speed" and "Speed Par­adise" cy­cling events. Or­gan­ised by Team DPS and its own­er, Robert Far­ri­er, the ac­tion takes place from June 19-21 at the Na­tion­al Cy­cling Cen­tre in Bal­main, Cou­va.

​Quin­tero, the men’s keirin gold medal­list at the 2023 UCI Track Cy­cling World Cham­pi­onships, has been a fierce ri­val of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Nicholas Paul on the in­ter­na­tion­al cir­cuit. His com­pa­tri­ot, Or­te­ga, claimed gold in the 1-Kilo­me­tre Time Tri­al at this year’s Pan Amer­i­can Track Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships and has al­so com­pet­ed dogged­ly against Paul at nu­mer­ous in­ter­na­tion­al events.

​While Paul was orig­i­nal­ly ex­pect­ed to lead the T&T con­tin­gent, key or­gan­is­er Far­ri­er ex­plained that he was forced to pull out due to oth­er com­mit­ments.

The Colom­bian duo will join some 20 in­ter­na­tion­al rid­ers. Al­so hail­ing from Colom­bia is the world’s top-ranked women's rid­er, Ste­fany Cuadra­do. Cuadra­do has achieved sig­nif­i­cant mile­stones ear­ly in her ca­reer, in­clud­ing mul­ti­ple gold medals at the Ju­nior Track Cy­cling World Cham­pi­onships and a bronze medal at the 2025 UCI Track Cy­cling World Cham­pi­onships. She will test the best of T&T, the Caribbean, and the wider in­ter­na­tion­al field.

Al­so among the cast of in­ter­na­tion­al cy­clists will be Cana­da’s sprint pair of Nick Wammes and James Hedg­cock, and en­durance rid­ers Sier­ra Or­ban and Emy Savard; Chile’s Ja­cob De­car; Mex­i­co’s Ri­car­do Pinea; Cu­ba’s Mar­lies Mejias Gar­cia; Bel­gium’s Nicky De­grenele; and Venezuela’s Clever Mar­tinez, and the ju­nior world cham­pi­on, men's sprint cham­pi­on from the Re­pub­lic of Ko­rea, Theo Choi, among many oth­ers.

With Paul out of the line­up, the lo­cal team will be led by for­mer Olympian Njisane Phillip, Kwe­si Browne, Ak­il Camp­bell, Te­niel Camp­bell, Alexi Cos­ta-Ramirez and Makaira Wal­lace. Wal­lace, a re­cent gold-medal win­ner at the UCI Class 1 event in Chile, made his­to­ry in 2025 as the first women's sprint cy­clist from T&T to qual­i­fy for the glob­al event–the UCI Track Cy­cling World Cham­pi­onships in San­ti­a­go, Chile.

Far­ri­er, the vi­sion­ary be­hind the event, em­pha­sised its im­por­tance, say­ing, "This year's ver­sion is very im­por­tant for the lo­cal Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­al team. These guys, who are prepar­ing for the up­com­ing Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) Games next month and the Com­mon­wealth Games next month. So it's a good prepa­ra­tion event for all our in­ter­na­tion­al and lo­cal rid­ers.

"Al­so, the event is crit­i­cal for qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the World Cham­pi­onship in Oc­to­ber this year, which is the first Olympic qual­i­fi­er. So it's mul­ti­pur­pose in terms of the need for our rid­ers here in T&T,” Far­ri­er ex­plained. Through the sup­port of cor­po­rate T&T, a bud­get of about $200,000 has been put out, with the ben­e­fits ex­pect­ed to be a lot more to the twin-is­land Re­pub­lic over the three-day pe­ri­od."

"I think we're close to 20 coun­tries and sports tourism and will be at its best, that's why we named the event Speed Par­adise and Car­ni­val of Speed, to en­sure that the rid­ers that come here it's left in their mind and etched in their mind the par­adise we have here. And the world-class fa­cil­i­ty that we host them in to have a won­der­ful event."

Spec­ta­tors can look for­ward to a spe­cial give­away for Fa­ther’s Day. Tick­ets are avail­able for pur­chase at Bike Inn lo­ca­tions in Ch­agua­nas and Mara­bel­la.