De­vante Lau­rence has not been in the best of form late­ly and it is cost­ing him dear­ly at the UCI Youth Track Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships in Tel Aviv, Is­rael.

On Thurs­day, Lau­rence, the son of Ex­press jour­nal­ist Kwame Lau­rence, failed to ad­vance to the match sprint event af­ter he pro­duced a time of 11.635 sec­onds in the fly­ing 200-me­tre sprints, which are used as the qual­i­fiers for the match sprints.

Lau­rence took to the tracks as the 12th rid­er and af­ter his two laps at the Syl­van Adams Na­tion­al Velo­drome, he crossed the fin­ish line in a time of 11.635 which proved to be too slow to progress. Ger­many's Dan­ny Wern­er was the fastest rid­er on the day at 10.198 sec­onds with the Czech Re­pub­lic's Jakub Malasek be­ing the sec­ond fastest rid­er at 10.205, Ryan El­liott (Aus­tralia) third in 10.232, Japan's Mi­na­to Nakaishi (10.282) fourth and Mat­tia Pre­do­mo of Italy in fifth po­si­tion in 10.289.

On Wednes­day, Lau­rence fin­ished sixth in the keirin event in his first in­ter­na­tion­al race in heat four, which pre­vent­ed him from ad­vanc­ing as one of the qual­i­fiers. How­ev­er, he lat­er got an­oth­er chance to seal a qual­i­fy­ing berth at the repechage that fol­lowed, but he again fin­ished sixth.

Thurs­day's ride con­clud­ed his par­tic­i­pa­tion at the world cham­pi­onships, but he will join the rest of T&T in pin­ning hopes on his com­pa­tri­ot Phoebe Sandy who will be con­test­ing the stand­ing 500m sprints this morn­ing.

Sandy, who was boot­ed out of the match sprint on Wednes­day when she lost to Aus­tralian Em­ma Stevens, will be in a bet­ter po­si­tion at a pos­si­ble medal com­pet­ing in her favourite event, na­tion­al coach Gre­go­ry Dan­drade has said.

Af­ter Fri­day's stand­ing 500m, Sandy will con­test the keirin on Sat­ur­day.