Cy­clists in the Pan Amer­i­can re­gion have been clam­our­ing for means to earn cru­cial UCI points for next year's Paris Olympic Games in France, clos­er to home, and it's fi­nal­ly here in the form of the UCI-sanc­tioned Speed Par­adise and the Car­ni­val of Speed.

The 'Speed' events were con­cep­tu­alised by cy­cling coach­es in the Pan Am re­gion, ex­press­ing the fact that their rid­ers have been at a dis­ad­van­tage to gain valu­able points from ma­jor events, as they have had to spend ex­or­bi­tant amounts of mon­ey to trav­el and gain it.

Robert Far­ri­er, a for­mer T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion pres­i­dent now turn coach, had been part of the dis­cus­sion and has led the charge with the Speed Par­adise event set from April 26-27 and the Car­ni­val of Speed from April 29-30 at the Na­tion­al Cy­cling Cen­tre in Bal­main, Cou­va, which came af­ter a re­quest was sent to the gov­ern­ing UCI and ap­proval was giv­en for it.

Both the events' names, Far­ri­er said, were care­ful­ly craft­ed ac­cord­ing to T&T's cul­ture.

"In think­ing about what we are as a peo­ple, Speed Par­adise, which would re­fer to some of the coun­try's fast rid­ers such as Nicholas Paul, who holds the record for the Fly­ing 200 me­tres in a time of 9.100 sec­onds and Njisane Phillip, a semi­fi­nal­ist in the match-sprint event at the 2012 Olympic Games in Lon­don, Eng­land, speaks to that.

"And well, Car­ni­val of Speed is self-ex­plana­to­ry when you think about what car­ni­val means to us in T&T," Far­ri­er ex­plained.

The em­pha­sis, he said, is to al­low rid­ers from T&T, the Caribbean and the wider Pan Am re­gion to gain vi­tal UCI points and there­by im­prove their world rank­ings.

Paul, who made his Olympic de­but at the Tokyo Games in Japan in 2021, is set to be among the large field of rid­ers, as well as, the im­prov­ing Kwe­si Browne and all the oth­er T&T rid­ers who are de­sirous of earn­ing UCI points.

In ad­di­tion to Paul, Browne and the oth­er T&T rid­ers, there have been calls from Great Britain, coun­tries in the Caribbean and the Pan Am na­tions for reg­is­tra­tion al­ready, it is said.

Far­ri­er said the event will catch the cy­clists soon af­ter their par­tic­i­pa­tion at the UCI Na­tions Cup in Cana­da from April 21-23. It will al­so jump-start the idea of sports tourism, he said, as cy­cling fans, fam­i­ly mem­bers and oth­er sup­port­ers are ex­pect­ed to be here.

Since the rid­ers will be here at their own cost, Far­ri­er said they will have min­i­mal over­heads, as the UCI points will be the prizes.

Lo­cal cy­cling club, Team DPS, will car­ry out the stag­ing of the event and will make en­try avail­able for the coun­try's se­nior cit­i­zens and chil­dren un­der the age of 12 years at no charge.

How­ev­er, gen­er­al en­try for fans and sup­port­ers is still to be an­nounced.

Far­ri­er said apart from the chase for vi­tal UCI points, the events will al­so fea­ture ju­nior in­ter­na­tion­al races, which will be used to pre­pare the coun­try's young rid­ers for the com­ing Com­mon­wealth Youth Games in Au­gust and the Ju­nior Pan Am in May.