While Nicholas Paul, world record hold­er in cy­cling's Men's Fly­ing 200m, must wait three more years to dis­play his un­doubt­ed class on the world's biggest stage for sports, the Olympic Games, one of his for­mer coach­es says Paul may have al­ready done so hence his bizarre ex­pe­ri­ence on Olympic de­but, fin­ish­ing 6th in the men's in­di­vid­ual sprint.

For­mer USA cy­clist Erin Hartwell who served a sec­ond stint as T&T cy­cling coach from 2017 to 2019 over­see­ing Kwe­si Browne's and Nicholas Paul's suc­cess­ful Olympic qual­i­fi­ca­tion says it is about time that the rou­tine sub­ju­ga­tion of cy­clists from small­er na­tions ends.

Speak­ing from Tokyo on Thurs­day night, where he is now work­ing as a mem­ber of the USA Track Cy­cling team's tech­ni­cal staff, Hartwell told Guardian Me­dia Sports, "I'll be hon­est. I did find that when I came back to Trinidad in 2017 and worked with the boys for al­most three years, our in­ter­pre­ta­tion was that there did seem to be times when weren't get­ting the calls that oth­er na­tions were. The more dom­i­nant, pros­per­ous or tra­di­tion­al na­tions would get the call over the small­er na­tions."

Hartwell con­tin­ued, "I'm not say­ing it's hap­pen­ing or it's not, it just tends to be an ob­ser­va­tion. My thought here is that Nicholas has risen to a stan­dard - he's the cur­rent world record hold­er, he's ob­vi­ous­ly pro­duc­ing good re­sults and has been do­ing so for the past cou­ple of years. He's the Pan Amer­i­can cham­pi­on, the best in the west­ern hemi­sphere, he should start get­ting the calls. Just like in pro­fes­sion­al bas­ket­ball, Le­Bron James is go­ing to get the call over a less­er play­er and I think the same ap­plies here. Nicholas has earned the right to get the call."

Hartwell was re­fer­ring to two de­ci­sions that went against Paul dur­ing the quar­ter­fi­nals of the men's sprint event ear­ly on Wednes­day morn­ing.

Paul, 22, had ig­nit­ed the imag­i­na­tion and then the ire (through no fault of his own) of Trin­bag­o­ni­ans as he jumped in­to the sad­dle to make his Olympic de­but.

In the Fly­ing 200m, the qual­i­fi­er for the in­di­vid­ual match sprint, Paul was one of nine rid­ers to dip un­der the pre­vi­ous Olympic record of 9.551 sec­onds set by leg­endary Great Britain rid­er, Ja­son Ken­ny at the Rio 2016 games. Nether­lands' rid­er Jef­frey Hoog­land re­set the record to 9.215 al­though his Dutch team­mate Har­rie Lavrey­sen reg­is­tered an iden­ti­cal time. Great Britain's George Car­lin clocked 9.306 to be the third fastest in the qual­i­fy­ing round while Paul was rough­ly one-thou­sandth of a sec­ond off Hoog­land and com­pa­ny with 9.316 sec­onds.

En­thused by Paul's per­for­mance, Hartwell said, "I was most im­pressed with how fo­cused, ma­ture and able to com­pete un­der ex­treme pres­sure that I've seen from Nicholas in these games. To qual­i­fy top four was amaz­ing, he was lit­er­al­ly a tenth of a sec­ond from ar­guably two of the great­est rid­ers in his­to­ry in Har­rie Lavrey­sen and Jef­frey Hoog­land and then you had Jack Car­lin (Great Britain) right in front of him by a cou­ple of hun­dredths. Nicholas was right there."

The stage was set for Paul to fur­ther mes­mer­ize the world. Light work against Aus­tralia's Matthew Richard­son in the 1/32 round and then against Malaysia's Az­izul­has­ni Awang in the 1/16 round-edged Paul clos­er to his des­tiny.

Next, Paul would dis­patch home­town ath­lete, Japan's Yu­ta Waki­mo­to to ad­vance to the quar­ter­fi­nal, to ar­rive as tru­ly one of the best eight sprint­ers in the world ac­cord­ing to Hartwell who told Guardian Me­dia Sports, "What was so im­por­tant was that as he worked through the rounds he main­tained his speed, he didn't lose a round and had to come back in the repechage. Com­ing in­to these games and pre­vi­ous com­pe­ti­tions Nicholas was a con­tender. And as we see from the pre­vi­ous World Cups, he is a con­sis­tent top-eight per­for­mance. Now the Olympics is a dif­fer­ent an­i­mal, you see peo­ple rise to the oc­ca­sion, you see peo­ple fall apart."

Paul was poised to rise to the oc­ca­sion in his quar­ter­fi­nal matchup, a best out of three du­els against De­nis Dmitriev who com­pet­ing un­der the ban­ner of the Russ­ian Olympic Com­mit­tee. Re­sult­ing from the ex­pos­ing of Rus­sia's state-spon­sored dop­ing scan­dal first in 2015, Russ­ian ath­letes at the 2020 Tokyo Games have been asked to com­pete un­der the ban­ner of the Russ­ian Olympic Com­mit­tee in­stead of their coun­try's na­tion­al flag.

Nev­er­the­less, Paul brushed the "state­less" Russ­ian aside eas­i­ly in the first ride and looked to have dished out more of the same treat­ment in the sec­ond and putting his foot down as one of the world's four best rid­ers. Mov­ing on to the medal round, the 22-year-old now had a chance to prove whether he was the gold stan­dard.

How­ev­er, of­fi­cials sub­se­quent­ly over­turned the re­sult of the sec­ond race be­tween the two, ad­judg­ing Paul to have left the sprint lane while round­ing the fi­nal bend for home and in the process, im­ped­ing Dmitriev from mak­ing a pass. Hartwell was not so con­vinced.

"What we see in cy­cling is that calls on the track are re­al­ly judg­ment calls. Yes, there is a rule book but those rules are to be in­ter­pret­ed. Not every­thing is black and white, there is a lot of grey area," said Hartwell "My ob­ser­va­tion and in­ter­pre­ta­tion was that, where Nicholas may have come just over the red line of the sprint lane, which could be an in­frac­tion, the re­al­i­ty was that the race was al­ready won. It didn't im­pede the progress of the Russ­ian and so I was sur­prised that call was made. Be­cause again, when it's a clear case of the oth­er rid­er is win­ning you don't al­ways make that call. That call doesn't need to be made."

Forced by of­fi­cials to en­gage in a third and de­cid­ing, Dmitriev at­tempt­ed a ma­noeu­vre ahead of the Gas­par­il­lo na­tive along the fi­nal 50 me­tres of the race. To avoid a clash of wheels, Paul flicked around Dmitriev and los­ing mo­men­tum as he watched the Russ­ian ride off in­to the quar­ter­fi­nal.

The sec­ond in­jus­tice was even worse than the first said Hartwell, "With the rides with Dmitriev, he (Nicholas) over­pow­ered him in the first round. Nicholas was just ob­vi­ous­ly the faster and the bet­ter rid­er on the day. Dmitriev is a for­mer world cham­pi­on he's one of the mod­ern all-time greats but I think Nicholas had the bet­ter of him."

Hartwell ex­plained, "We talked among some coach­es to see how are the of­fi­cials re­al­ly in­ter­pret­ing this race. The feed­back we're get­ting in­ter­nal­ly was that what the of­fi­cials are say­ing is; com­ing down the home straight with a lap to go, he (Nicholas) was in the pole lane with Dmitriev just to the out­side. What the of­fi­cials are say­ing is that be­cause Nicholas dipped be­low the black line for a split sec­ond, their in­ter­pre­ta­tion was that he left the field of play and there­fore when the Russ­ian came over in­to the pole a bit, that it was then the Russ­ian's po­si­tion and that Nicholas would have had to back out and come around. I dis­agree per­son­al­ly"

While Hartwell ar­tic­u­lates what so many felt and still feel about the se­ries of events, he says that we must ac­cept the de­ci­sions of the of­fi­cials and move on. But he gave cy­cling fans and Nicholas Paul sup­port­ers some hope.

"I'm gut­ted for Nicko. I'm pret­ty sure it took the wind out of his sails not to make the se­mi-fi­nals. I still be­lieve he's a top-four guy here, if not bet­ter, if not a po­ten­tial medal­list. So, it's sad, it's un­for­tu­nate but I promise you this - that kid is go­ing to be back and he's go­ing to be bet­ter than ever and I see him as a gold medal con­tender for Paris."

Camp­bell can con­quer Paris

Ear­li­er at the games, Trin­bag­o­ni­ans shared in the de­spair of an­oth­er T&T cy­clist, Te­niel Camp­bell. Camp­bell, 23, al­so de­buted at the games as the first Caribbean woman ever to com­pete in road cy­cling. Camp­bell was un­able to fin­ish the race due to cramps and was forced to for­feit rough­ly three hours in­to her ride up Mt Fu­ji.

Hartwell em­pathised when he said, "One thing I think we need to be care­ful about with Te­niel is that she is a bonafide world-class bike rid­er. An in­cred­i­ble road rac­er with so much po­ten­tial for years to come. I do see her even­tu­al­ly be­ing one of the best. One of the is­sues with the Tokyo Olympics is that the course was not suit­ed to the style of rac­ing. It was a very hilly course, much more suit­ed to a climber type rid­er. Te­niel is much more of a sprint­er that does bet­ter on flat­ter ter­rain and so the Olympics was al­ways go­ing to be a chal­lenge for her."

Af­ter emerg­ing as one of the fu­ture stars of the Caribbean and Amer­i­c­as, 23-year-old Camp­bell joined the UCI World Cy­cling Cen­tre pro­gramme in Switzer­land in 2018. There she spent two years be­fore sign­ing a pro­fes­sion­al con­tract in 2020 with Val­car Trav­el & Ser­vice. Last year Camp­bell switched to Mitchel­ton-Scott Team Bike Ex­change as she con­tin­ued a steep rise in the world of women's road cy­cling. If she con­tin­ues along that tra­jec­to­ry, Hartwell says Paris will be her's for the tak­ing. He says her men­tal strength alone makes her one to pay close at­ten­tion to in the com­ing years.

"If your head's not in it your body is nev­er go­ing to fol­low. So be­ing con­fi­dent, be­ing mo­ti­vat­ed is the first dri­ver in be­com­ing a suc­cess­ful world-class ath­lete (cy­cling or any­thing else) and Te­niel has that. And I think what is so unique with her and any oth­er Trin­bag­on­ian ath­lete that I've seen is that they wear their coun­try on their sleeve. There is so much pride in be­ing a Trin­bag­on­ian and rep­re­sent­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go at these events that I think it can be over­pow­er­ing and may be over­whelm­ing at times but it can al­so be a great mo­ti­va­tor for these ath­letes."