The "usu­al sus­pects" – Nicholas Paul, Njisane Phillip, Makaira Wal­lace, Alexi Ramirez, and Te­niel Camp­bell – are as­sured of spots on the Trinidad and To­ba­go team for the Pan Amer­i­can Track Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships, sched­uled for Feb­ru­ary 16-22 in San­ti­a­go, Chile.

Guardian Me­dia Sports un­der­stands that oth­er rid­ers are cur­rent­ly con­firm­ing their avail­abil­i­ty af­ter se­lec­tion let­ters were sent di­rect­ly to the ath­letes and their re­spec­tive clubs.

​A mem­ber of the T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion (TTCF), speak­ing on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, not­ed there were ini­tia­tives to field T&T teams in the madi­son and team pur­suit events for the first time.

How­ev­er, Camp­bell was the on­ly en­durance rid­er to meet the qual­i­fy­ing stan­dard at the re­cent TTCF Tri­als held at the Na­tion­al Cy­cling Cen­tre in Bal­main, Cou­va. Camp­bell, vot­ed the "Sports­woman of the Year" at the First Cit­i­zens Sports Foun­da­tion Awards at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) in Port-of-Spain, de­liv­ered a quick 4:56.61 in the in­di­vid­ual pur­suit tri­als, eas­i­ly sur­pass­ing the qual­i­fi­ca­tion stan­dard of 5:30.00.

​In the men’s equiv­a­lent, Ja­di­an Neaves came clos­est to the 4:35.00 qual­i­fy­ing mark, fin­ish­ing in 4:36.30. The rest of the field, in­clud­ing Liam Trepte (4:41.34), Tariq Woods (4:43.54), and Ak­il Camp­bell (4:56.95), fell short of the tar­get. Still, the quar­tet may re­ceive dis­cre­tionary picks based on the se­lec­tion com­mit­tee’s eval­u­a­tion of their per­for­mance times.

​Phillip, Paul and Wal­lace se­cured their berths fol­low­ing their per­for­mances at last year’s Bo­li­var­i­an Games in Li­ma, Pe­ru. They are ex­pect­ed to be joined by Kwe­si Browne, who fell ag­o­nis­ing­ly short of the 10.10 qual­i­fy­ing stan­dard with a time of 10.256 in the 200m time tri­al last week. Browne is like­ly to re­ceive a dis­cre­tionary pick along­side Zion Puli­do. While Puli­do missed the 200m tri­al mark with a 10.590, he was the lone qual­i­fi­er in the men’s stand­ing 250m event, clock­ing 17.79 to beat the 18.00 stan­dard.

​Mean­while, Kyra Williams and Phoebe Sandy have al­so re­port­ed­ly re­ceived se­lec­tion let­ters, while Ramirez was al­so among the se­lect­ed few. The cy­cling fed­er­a­tion found it­self in a le­gal bat­tle to se­lect the team for the Pan Am Track Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships af­ter a last-minute change to its se­lec­tion process last year. It was chal­lenged by a group of elite cy­clists, de­mand­ing that the se­lec­tion process be ad­hered to. The mat­ter was even­tu­al­ly set­tled in court.