Ja­di­an Neaves stole the spot­light on the open­ing night of three in the East­er Grand Prix Cy­cling, which ped­alled off at the

Ian Ather­ly Track, Skin­ner Park, in San Fer­nan­do, on Fri­day night.

In front of an es­ti­mat­ed crowd of 400 spec­ta­tors, Neaves, 19, who rode to two bronze medals (Points Race and Om­ni­um Race) at last year’s Pan Amer­i­can Track Cham­pi­onships in Li­ma, Pe­ru, won the Elite & In­ter­na­tion­al Men 10 laps, Elite & In­ter­na­tion­al Men UCI Points Race and Elite & In­ter­na­tion­al Men UCI Elim­i­na­tion races.

In the Elite & In­ter­na­tion­al Men 10 Laps, Neaves crossed the line in the first po­si­tion ahead of the USA’s Luke Fet­zer (Tur­bo Velo Pick­le Juice) and his coun­try­man An­ton Gib­son (Start Track Cy­cling), while T&T’s Liam Trepte just missed out on a podi­um fin­ish in fourth.

Neaves, who won the first T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion (TTCF) Road Race Chal­lenge in Jan­u­ary, then dom­i­nat­ed his ri­vals in the In­ter­na­tion­al Men UCI Points Race to se­cure the gold medal with 90 points, while USA’s Bradley Green (Star Track Cy­cling/USA) was a dis­tant sec­ond with 58, and T&T’s Ak­il Camp­bell, who is bat­tling the flu, was a cred­itable third with 41, a point ahead of USA’s Fet­zer.

Neaves then end­ed the night’s pro­gramme by lead­ing a T&T clean sweep of the medals in the Elite & In­ter­na­tion­al Men UCI Elim­i­na­tion, beat­ing Camp­bell to the gold medal, while Trepte got bronze ahead of Gib­son.

The oth­er win for the lo­cal rid­ers in the Elite I & In­ter­na­tion­al Men cat­e­go­ry on the night came in the 500m fi­nals when for­mer Pan Amer­i­can Sprint Team sil­ver medal team mem­ber Zion Puli­do raced home first, well clear of coun­try­man Danell James, while Javon Ram­roop (Evo­lu­tion Cy­cling Acad­e­my) took the third spot ahead of Camp­bell (T&T).

The night’s pro­gramme was marred by sev­er­al spills which re­sult­ed in a num­ber of cy­clists hav­ing to be tak­en to hos­pi­tal.

This in­clud­ed a crash in­volv­ing T&T’s Troy Nel­son (Madon­na Wheel­ers) and the USA’s George Go­da­do (Valkyries) in the Elite II Ten Laps, with the lat­ter suf­fer­ing a frac­tured hip, and due to the ab­sence of the am­bu­lance at that spe­cif­ic time af­ter it took an­oth­er cy­clist to hos­pi­tal, a de­ci­sion was tak­en to sus­pend the rest of the pro­gramme and con­tin­ue the events when the Grand Prix con­tin­ues at the Ari­ma Velo­drome last night.

To­day’s fi­nal day of cy­cling will be held at the Na­tion­al Cy­cling Velo­drome in Bal­main, Cou­va, from 10 am.

Fresh from his team sprint gold medal per­for­mance at the 2025 Elite Pan Amer­i­can Track Cham­pi­onships in Paraguay, Ryan D’Abreau will spear­head the sprint team, which al­so in­cludes Je­lani Nedd, Dar­nell James and Puli­do, while Camp­bell leads the en­durance quar­tet along with Tariq Woods, Neaves and Trepte.

This week­end’s Grand Prix is of ut­most im­por­tance to the rid­ers, as it has been reg­is­tered as a UCI Grand Prix, mean­ing there is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for rid­ers to earn UCI points to­wards qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the Pan Amer­i­can Ju­nior Cham­pi­onship and the Na­tions Cup.

This year’s East­er Grand Prix fea­tures com­pe­ti­tion in sev­er­al cat­e­gories, in­clud­ing Elite I and In­ter­na­tion­al Men, Elite I and In­ter­na­tion­al Women, Elite II, Elite III, Youth De­vel­op­ment (Boys and Girls in the Un­der-7, U-9, U-11 and U-13 cat­e­gories), Tiny Mites, Ju­ve­niles, Ju­nior Men, Ju­nior Women, and Mas­ters (40-49, 50-59, 60-69 and 70+).

Among the spon­sors are Nu­cor, NL­CB, NGC, the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Sport and Cul­ture Fund, Bike Inn, RigTech, Blue Wa­ters and the Sports Com­pa­ny of T&T (SporTT).