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Monday, February 24, 2025

Paul pedals to match sprint gold

by

WALTER ALIBEY
672 days ago
20230424
T&T’s Nicholas Paul, right, the bronze medal winner of Saturday’s keirin final of the UCI Nations Cup in Milton, Canada, is flanked by the gold medallist from Australia Matthew Richardson, centre, and second-place from Germany Maximilian Dornbach.

T&T’s Nicholas Paul, right, the bronze medal winner of Saturday’s keirin final of the UCI Nations Cup in Milton, Canada, is flanked by the gold medallist from Australia Matthew Richardson, centre, and second-place from Germany Maximilian Dornbach.

T&T’s sprint ace Nicholas Paul claimed the gold medal in the fi­nal of the match sprint event on the fi­nal day of the UCI Track Na­tions Cup at the Mat­tamy Na­tion­al Cy­cling Cen­tre in Mil­ton, Cana­da on Sun­day.

The 24-year-old de­feat­ed Poland’s Ma­teusz Rudyk in two straight rides to add a gold medal to the bronze he won on Sat­ur­day night in the fi­nal of the keirin.

Rodyk, a gold medal­list at the 2016 UEC Eu­ro­pean Track Cham­pi­onships in the team sprint, went for the ear­ly ad­van­tage well be­fore the bell lap in the first ride, but he did not have the legs to hold off Paul in a dash to the fin­ish.

Lat­er in the sec­ond ride, Rodyk, mind­ful of his coun­ter­part’s abil­i­ty to ac­cel­er­ate, again went out ear­ly, but Paul made sure of the gold medal by blaz­ing past him on the stretch to cross the fin­ish line com­fort­ably for the win.

Ear­li­er in the day, Paul made his in­ten­tions of an­oth­er medal in Mil­ton known from as ear­ly as the fly­ing 200-me­tre qual­i­fy­ing sprints, the event that he holds the record for, back in 2019, cour­tesy of a blis­ter­ing 9.100 sec­onds ride that was set at the Elite Pan Amer­i­can Track Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships in Cochabam­ba, Bo­livia.

Dur­ing the gold medal ride, the Gas­par­il­lo res­i­dent was again at his best, set­ting the fastest time at 9.575, with Suri­name’s Jair Tjon En Fa be­ing the sec­ond-fastest on the morn­ing and the pair of Rudyk and Matthew Glaet­zer (Aus­tralia) se­cur­ing the top four places go­ing in­to the re­sult­ing match sprint events lat­er on.

Kwe­si Browne, the oth­er T&T rid­er who was dropped on the way to the keirin sec­ond round on Sat­ur­day, was the 24th qual­i­fi­er for the match sprint, but he faced a test in the round of 16 that he could not over­come.

Chi­na’s Yu Zhou stopped Browne in his track af­ter just one ride to ad­vance. How­ev­er, Paul whose bronze medal in the keirin fi­nal on Sat­ur­day night was his first medal since his in­jury last year ap­peared to be find­ing the form that earned him mul­ti­ple medals in the past.

Paul dis­posed of Mat­tia Pre­do­mo of Italy on his way to the quar­ter­fi­nal round, where he then took care of Zhou, the Chi­nese rid­er who oust­ed his coun­try­man in the round of 16 for his en­try in the semi­fi­nal round, which al­so came with a taste of sweet re­venge.

And in the semi­fi­nals where he went up against Aus­tralian Matthew Richard­son, who twice de­feat­ed him in Cana­da this week­end, Paul proved to be a cut above his op­po­nent.

In the first ride, the man who made it to the quar­ter­fi­nal round of the keirin event in on­ly his de­but ap­pear­ance at the Olympic Games in 2021, skil­ful­ly held off the Aus­tralian to the out­side be­fore dri­ving to the fin­ish with aplomb.

And in the sec­ond ride, he pro­duced blind­ing speed to dri­ve past Richard­son for his berth in­to the fi­nal where he faced Rudyk, who de­feat­ed Malaysian Shah Muham­mad Sahrom in two straight rides in the oth­er semi­fi­nal, for the right to con­test the ti­tle ride.

On the oth­er hand, T&T’s fe­male rid­er Alexi Cos­ta-Ramirez, in her first taste of ac­tion at Mil­ton, failed to ad­vance past her heat two of the women’s om­ni­um.


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