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Monday, February 24, 2025

Historical gold, silver for T&T cyclists at Pan Am

by

Walter Alibey
1339 days ago
20210627
T&T’s sprint cycling team - from left to right- Njisane Phillip, Zion Pulido and Keron Bramble that claimed the silver medal on the opening day of the Elite Pan American Track Cycling Championships in Lima, Peru on Friday. .

T&T’s sprint cycling team - from left to right- Njisane Phillip, Zion Pulido and Keron Bramble that claimed the silver medal on the opening day of the Elite Pan American Track Cycling Championships in Lima, Peru on Friday. .

There were mo­ments of his­to­ry-mak­ing, cou­pled with gold and sil­ver medal per­for­mances on the open­ing two days of the Elite Pan Amer­i­can Track Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships in Li­ma, Pe­ru on Fri­day and Sat­ur­day.

Day two yes­ter­day alone, saw Ak­ile Camp­bell be­came on­ly the first T&T rid­er to win a gold medal in the Scratch Race of the Pan Am, as he held off a more-than-com­pet­i­tive field that in­clud­ed Jamol East­man (Bar­ba­dos), Julio Padil­la (Guatemala), Leonidas Novoa (Ecuador), Pablo Seis­de­dos (Chile), Emil­iano Mi­ra Fuentes (Mex­i­co), Lu­cas Pi­ano (Uruguay), Luis Gomez (Venezuela), Ivan Ruiz (Ar­genti­na), Steven Ruiz (Pe­ru) and Ju­lian Os­o­rio of Colom­bia in the 15-kilo­me­tre event.

On the open­ing day, T&T's cy­cling team of Njisane Phillip, Keron Bram­ble and Zion Puli­do claimed the sil­ver medal on Fri­day.

They just missed out on de­fend­ing the ti­tle they won back in 2019, as they were pipped by in the fi­nal by Colom­bia 45.227, while the men in red, white and black clocked 45.442

The two teams drew swords from as ear­ly as the pre­lim­i­nary rounds, as Colom­bia's 44.933 put them as the fastest team head­ing in­to the quar­ter­fi­nal round. T&T, led by the mul­ti-tal­ent­ed and well ex­pe­ri­enced Phillip, was the sec­ond-fastest team at 45.822, while Ar­genti­na (45.939), Mex­i­co (46.314), Pe­ru (47.356), Venezuela (47.454), Ecuador (48.083) and Chile round­ing off the top eight teams.

But there was no get­ting away from a fi­nal show­down be­tween the top two teams at the end of the day, as T&T got the bet­ter of Ecuador in the first of two semi­fi­nals in 44.9 while Colom­bia's team de­feat­ed Ar­genti­na for the ti­tle ride, which the Colom­bians won.

Af­ter the race coach Gre­go­ry Dan­drade said he was ex­treme­ly hap­py with the per­for­mance of the team: "I'm hap­py to work with the youths, we were un­der a lot of pres­sure be­cause two of our top cy­clists were out be­cause of the Olympics. We were able to do a de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme with the youths, bring­ing in Puli­do as a new­com­er, and we per­formed, they ex­e­cut­ed, it was ex­cel­lent to get the sil­ver medal," Dan­drade told Guardian Me­dia Sports.

Ac­cord­ing to Dan­drade, a for­mer na­tion­al rid­er turn coach, there was room for im­prove­ment but they had a young guy in the team, as well as an an­chor in Bram­ble who has nev­er an­chored a team be­fore.

Mean­while, Alexi Cos­ta al­so se­cured a sil­ver medal in the Scratch Race be­hind the even­tu­al win­ner Am­bar Joseph of Bar­ba­dos and Mex­i­co's Vic­to­ria Fuentes Ve­las­co. Dan­drade said Cos­ta was ex­cel­lent, im­prov­ing so much un­der Andy Sparks, who is al­so help­ing the T&T team.

Yes­ter­day the pair of Phillip and Bram­ble was in search of an­oth­er sil­ver­ware in the keirin event af­ter both ad­vanced from ear­ly rounds. Need­ing to be among the top two in the heats, Bram­ble lat­er pro­gressed from the repechage af­ter a third-place fin­ish in heat one, which com­prised Colom­bian Kevin Quin­tero, the even­tu­al win­ner, Luis Cor­don (Guatemala) who fin­ished sec­ond, Bran­don Reid (Ja­maica), Francesco Bone (Ecuador) and Daniel Palmer of Ja­maica.

Phillip on the oth­er hand was sec­ond in his heat be­hind San­ti­a­go Ramirez of Colom­bia.


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