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Tuesday, February 25, 2025

Paul, Ahye cop 2023 top sports awards as National 3X3 basketballers get Team of the Year honours

by

NIGEL SIMON
344 days ago
20240318

Cy­clist Nicholas Paul and sprint­er Michelle-Lee Ahye added to their hauls of First Cit­i­zens Sports­man of the Year and Sports­woman of the Year Awards at the 61st an­nu­al func­tion at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel, Port-of-Spain on Sat­ur­day night.

It was the third such ho­n­our for the 25-year-old Paul, who al­so copped the pres­ti­gious award in 2019 and 2021 while for the 31-year-old Ahye, it was her fourth win hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly cap­tured the award in 2016, 2017, and 2018.

With her win, Ahye has now equalled for­mer bad­minton cham­pi­on De­bra O’Con­nor (1983, 1986, 1990, and 1993) and swim­mer Siob­han Crop­per (1994, 1997, 1998, 1999) with the sec­ond most First Cit­i­zens Sports­woman of the Year wins, one be­hind Cleopa­tra Borel who is the record awards win­ner with five fol­low­ing tri­umphs in 2002, 2007, 2010, 2014 and 2015.

Last year, Paul bat­tled his way back from se­vere in­jury with a stun­ning dis­play at the UCI Na­tions Cup event in Mil­ton, Cana­da where he ped­alled his way to the men’s Match Sprint gold medal and al­so earned the bronze medal in the Keirin bronze.

Then at the Pan Am Games in San­ti­a­go, Chile, Paul won the gold in the Match Sprint and sil­ver in the Keirin be­fore he won the dou­ble at the Pan Am Track Cham­pi­onships, achiev­ing vic­to­ries in the Match Sprint and Keirin events while lead­ing the T&T team which al­so in­clud­ed Zion Puli­do and Kwe­si Browne to a sec­ond-place in the Team sprint.

At the UCI Track World Cham­pi­onship in Glas­gow, Scot­land, Paul was beat­en in the Match Sprint fi­nal and had to set­tle for the sil­ver medal while at the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) in San Sal­vador, Paul claimed the in­di­vid­ual Sprint ti­tle beat­ing coun­try­man Browne in the fi­nal while in the Team Sprint, the duo and Puli­do got bronze.

Vet­er­an track ath­lete Ahye earned a bronze medal in the women’s 100-me­tre dash at the 2023 Pan Am Games to fin­ish her 2023 sea­son on a high, as she clocked 11.53 sec­onds to fin­ish be­hind gold medal win­ner, Cu­ba’s Yu­nislei­dy Gar­cia (11.36) and Jas­mine Abrams of Guyana, who clocked 11.52 sec­onds.

This dis­play came af­ter Ahye got to the 100 me­tres semi­fi­nals at the World Ath­let­ics Cham­pi­onships in Bu­dapest, Hun­gary, and on lo­cal soil the Care­nage res­i­dent al­so thrived where she was based for 2023, win­ning the women’s 100m ti­tle at the NAAA Cham­pi­onships at Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo.

Swim­mer Nikoli Black­man made it four straight wins in the Youth Sports­man of the Year ti­tle af­ter an­oth­er sen­sa­tion­al year was high­light­ed by his 50-me­ter freestyle ti­tle win at the World Aquat­ics Ju­nior Cham­pi­onships in Ne­tanya, Is­rael.

Black­man, now at­tached to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ten­nessee, al­so cap­tured three gold medals—50m freestyle, 100m freestyle, and 200m freestyle—dur­ing the Com­mon­wealth Youth Games which was held in T&T last year, and won the same events at the Carif­ta Swim­ming Cham­pi­onships; and a so­journ in­to the se­nior lev­el at the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) Games yield­ed a 200m freestyle sil­ver medal and a 4x100m freestyle re­lay bronze.

Track and Field star­let Janae De Gannes cap­tured the Youth Sports­woman of the Year top award af­ter grab­bing a sil­ver medal at the Com­mon­wealth Youth Games fol­low­ing a hard-fought bat­tle with Aus­tralia’s Delta Amid­zows­ki in the long jump fi­nal.

At the NACAC Un­der-18—Un­der-23 Cham­pi­onships, De Gannes won the Un­der-18 long jump (6.11 me­ters—cham­pi­onship record) and 4x100 me­tres re­lay ti­tles, while she claimed a pair of sil­ver medals in the Un­der-20 long jump and 4x100 re­lay events at the Carif­ta Track and Field Games in Nas­sau, Ba­hamas.

The Lystra Lewis Award for the Team of the Year was cap­tured by the T&T Na­tion­al 3x3 bas­ket­ball team of twin broth­ers Ah­keem and Ah­keel Boyd, skip­per Mori­ba De Fre­itas, and Chilke Au­gus­tine who won a bronze medal at the 2023 Pan Am Games, San­ti­a­go, Chile.

The team was coached by Christo­pher Jack­son Charles, with Wayne Samuel as man­ag­er and train­er.

The Sports Awards func­tion ho­n­oured the out­stand­ing achieve­ments of some 100-plus ath­letes who demon­strat­ed un­par­al­leled skill, ded­i­ca­tion, and sports­man­ship across var­i­ous dis­ci­plines in 2023.

The func­tion al­so saw the in­duc­tion of awardees in­to the Sports Hall of Fame for 2024 who in­clud­ed Can­dice Scott (ath­let­ics), Cleopa­tra Borel (ath­let­ics), Marc Burns (ath­let­ics), De­on Lendore (posthu­mous-ath­let­ics), Pearl Good­ing ((posthu­mous- ath­let­ics), Leslie Stew­art (box­ing), Charles Joseph (coach), Kwand­wane Browne (hock­ey), Ed­mund De Fre­itas (train­er/horse rac­ing), Gor­don Bor­de (ad­min­is­tra­tor/swim­ming), Can­dil­la Berment (ad­min­is­tra­tor/spe­cial Olympics), and De­van Ma­hadeo (posthu­mous-spe­cial olympian/ad­min­is­tra­tor).

Dur­ing her brief ad­dress, First Cit­i­zens Group Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Karen Dar­basie said, “Through the in­valu­able work of the First Cit­i­zens Sports Foun­da­tion, it has been a priv­i­lege to pro­vide sus­tained sup­port, crit­i­cal op­por­tu­ni­ties and very im­por­tant­ly de­serv­ing recog­ni­tion, to the hun­dreds who have car­ried our sport­ing hopes and dreams.”

She added praised all the ath­letes for their hard work and ded­i­ca­tion to their sport as well as be­ing more than just sports­men and sports­women say­ing, “This tremen­dous and con­cert­ed ef­fort, is what it takes to cre­ate and ho­n­our gen­er­a­tions of con­querors. Yet, as we mark our 20th an­niver­sary and host the 61st edi­tion of these awards, we pause not on­ly to cel­e­brate and re­ward but al­so to in­vite our ath­letes to re­mem­ber they are more than con­querors, you, each of you, are an in­spi­ra­tion and a role mod­el for the next gen­er­a­tion.

The Min­is­ter of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Sham­fa Cud­joe-Lewis al­so gave words of in­spi­ra­tion to the awardees, thank­ing them for rep­re­sent­ing the red, black, and white proud­ly on the world sports stage.


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