Nicholas Paul placed ninth over­all in the Men's Sprint at the In­ter­na­tion­al Cy­cling Union (UCI) Track World Cup in Hong Kong on Sun­day.

On the fi­nal day of the Cup at the Hong Kong Velo­drome, the record-break­er at the Elite Pan Amer­i­can Track Cham­pi­onship in Bo­livia with 9.100 sec­onds, was stopped by Japan's To­moyu­ki Kawa­ba­ta (JPN) in heat five of the 1/8 fi­nals.

This af­ter Paul pro­gressed from the qual­i­fi­ca­tion round in the fifth spot with 9.766 in the 200m fly­ing start. The top four rid­ers au­to­mat­i­cal­ly qual­i­fied for the 1/8 fi­nals while fifth to 28th qual­i­fy for the 1/16 fi­nals which meant that T&T's oth­er cy­clist in the event, Keron Bram­ble's time in the event end­ed at the qual­i­fy­ing stage af­ter plac­ing 32nd with 10.143.

Mean­while, Paul raced off against New Zealand's Cal­lum Saun­ders, who in his de­but at the World Cup emerged the Keirin cham­pi­on the day be­fore, in the 1/16 fi­nal and he pre­vailed post­ing a time of 10.494 sec­onds to meet To­moyu­ki. How­ev­er, the 21-year-old lo­cal cy­clist did not reach the quar­ter­fi­nals against the Japan­ese cy­clist who clocked 10.042. For his ef­fort, Paul earned 250 points to­wards T&T's Olympic qual­i­fi­ca­tion quest.

Tak­ing the gold medal was World cham­pi­on Har­rie Lavrey­sen of The Nether­lands, who swept team­mate and sil­ver medal­list Jef­frey Hoog­land in the fi­nal. In third place was To­mo­hi­ro Fukaya of Japan.

On Sat­ur­day, Kwe­si Browne failed to ad­vance to the sec­ond round in the keirin event.

Browne, rid­ing in heat four, need­ed to win the race to earn a qual­i­fy­ing berth in the sec­ond round, but he fin­ished in the sec­ond po­si­tion be­hind even­tu­al win­ner Lavrey­sen who post­ed a quick time of 9.767 sec­onds.

Lavrey­sen was joined in the sec­ond round by Japan's Yu­dai Nit­ta, the win­ner of the first heat (10.240), Malaysia's Az­izul­has­ni Awang (9.948), Cana­da's Hugo Bar­rette (10.117), Ger­many's Max­imil­lian Levy (10.665) and Thai­land's Jai Angsutha­saw­it (10.034), all win­ners of their re­spec­tive heat.

In the first round repechage, where the first rid­er in each heat qual­i­fy to sec­ond round, Browne again was sec­ond, this time to Czech Re­pub­lic's Tomas Babek and fin­ished tied for 13th spot with Nick Wammes (PTM), Jean Spies (South Africa), Alek­sander Dubchenko (Rus­sia), Shih Feng Kang (Tai­wan) and Her­sony Ve­ra Canelon (Venezuela).

On Fri­day, T&T's Sprint Team of Njisane Phillip, Nicholas Paul and Kerin Bram­ble pro­gressed to the sec­ond round with a sev­enth-place fin­ish, but they could not go fur­ther af­ter be­ing beat­en by France in the sec­ond round.