It was an over­all, pro­fes­sion­al team ef­fort that en­abled the T&T cy­cling team, un­der for­mer na­tion­al rid­er turned coach Njisane Phillip, to claim the win of the Caribbean Track Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships Na­tion­al Cy­cling Cen­tre (NCC) in Bal­main, Cou­va over the week­end.

Phillip in his first for­ay as na­tion­al coach guid­ed Kwe­si Browne to win­ning four medals, gold medals in the team sprint, the match sprint and the keirin as well as a sil­ver medal in the elim­i­na­tion race, Phoebe Sandy won a sil­ver medal in the match sprint, as well as a new na­tion­al record in the fly­ing 200 me­tres, among many oth­er achieve­ments.

Though the over­all re­sults were not cal­cu­lat­ed, it has been es­tab­lished that the T&T team has won over­all, be­cause they won the most medals.

Phillip said his in­ten­tion was to make the rid­ers as com­fort­able as pos­si­ble.

“It was re­al­ly nice to see the team’s per­for­mance, it was re­al­ly, re­al­ly good. The team chem­istry was good. I think that had a big part to play in it. Just be­ing able to get to­geth­er as a group and train to­geth­er, shows that get­ting the ath­letes to­geth­er and bond­ing and train­ing and them push­ing each oth­er is a pos­i­tive thing,” Phillip said.

“To do bet­ter I don’t think they had the re­sources at the time to be fair. I think the fed­er­a­tion should see it as a pos­i­tive. We had UCI camp a cou­ple of weeks be­fore, which was good be­cause most of the ath­letes were at that camp and they were bond­ing and de­vel­op­ing their re­la­tion­ships. And then a week lat­er, we were told that we were host­ing these Games, so the fed­er­a­tion was able to put them back to­geth­er again and house them at the Home of Foot­ball in Cou­va to just keep the team to­geth­er.”

“It was about every­body get­ting to know one an­oth­er, watch­ing one an­oth­er sleep, how oth­ers train and how oth­ers would re­cov­er, that’s a big part. The slow­er ones would look at the fast ones to see what they’re do­ing to try and mim­ic that be­cause when you’re at home you’re in a dif­fer­ent regime, but when you’re to­geth­er you get to see what oth­ers are do­ing and maybe you might re­alise that men go­ing to sleep ear­li­er than you, and all that has to do with the chem­istry.”

Phillip, a four-time Olympian who reached the round of four in the match sprint in 2012 in Lon­don, Eng­land, al­so saw per­son­al best per­for­mances com­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly from all the rid­ers that con­test­ed the fly­ing 200 me­tres. This he be­lieves had a lot to do with the way he struc­tured his train­ing, cou­pled with the easy ac­cess to re­sources the ath­letes had.

Apart from Phillip, the na­tion­al team staff com­pris­es- Ian Cole (Man­ag­er), El­isha Greene and Jov­ian Gomez (Me­chan­ics) and Kezia Paul Payne (Chap­er­one).

T&T MEDALS

GOLD

Kwe­si Browne (Team Sprint, match sprint, keirin), Tariq Woods (Kilo­me­tre Time Tri­al), Alexi Ramirez (Scratch Race), Samuel Mal­oney (Ju­nior keirin), Alex­ia Wil­son (Ju­nior 500m sprint), Alex­ia Wil­son ( Ju­nior match sprint), Alex­ia Wil­son (Ju­nior keirin), T&T Team of Kwe­si Browne, Zion Puli­do and Ryan D’Abreau (Team Sprint), T&T Women’s team of Alex­ia Ramirez, Adri­an­na Sey­ja­gat, Phoebe Sandy (Team Sprint), De­vante Lau­rence (Ju­nior Scratch Race),

SIL­VER

Kwe­si Browne (Elim­i­na­tion Race), Pheobe Sandy (match sprint), Raul Gar­cia (Ju­nior keirin), T&T’s Elite Men’s Team - Mau­rice Bur­nette, Tariq Woods, En­rique de Co­mar­mond, Liam Trepte (Team Pur­suit),

BRONZE

Alexi Ramirez (Om­ni­um), Jarel Mo­hammed (Ju­nior keirin), Pheobe Sandy (500m sprint), En­rique De Co­mor­mand (Elite Men’s Elim­i­na­tion)