Af­ter a se­ries of good, con­sis­tent per­for­mances on their bikes, T&T’s ju­nior team of Syn­del Sama­roo, Maki­ra Wal­lace, Dar­nell James, Jarell Mo­hammed and Raoul Gar­cia will at­tempt to pro­duce podi­um fin­ish­es at the Pan Amer­i­can Ju­nior Track Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships in Paraguay on Wednes­day. The cham­pi­onships starts on Tues­day.

The team, be­ing coached by Eli­jah Greene and man­aged by Steve Nakhid, left over the week­end and will car­ry huge hopes of not on­ly good per­for­mances and times but al­so medals, said Enio­la Black­man-Coop­er, the Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer (PRO) of the T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion.

The cham­pi­onships will ped­al off to­day and run un­til the 14 (May 9-14).

Black­man-Coop­er said, based on what she saw over a se­ries of events, such as this year’s East­er In­ter­na­tion­al Cy­cling Grand Prix, the UCI-sanc­tioned Speed Par­adise and Car­ni­val of Speed events, and the re­cent Na­tion­al Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships at the Na­tion­al Cy­cling Cen­tre (NCC) in Bal­main, Cou­va, the young rid­ers are on course to com­pete suc­cess­ful­ly against in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion from to­day.

“At these events, the rid­ers have demon­strat­ed a lev­el of con­sis­ten­cy by fin­ish­ing among the top three to five places in events. Sama­roo, Wal­lace, Gar­cia and Mo­hammed, in par­tic­u­lar, have done re­al­ly well, so from them, I have huge ex­pec­ta­tions of not on­ly good per­for­mances but more speed and medals,” Black­man-Coop­er ex­plained.

Sama­roo burst on­to the scene as an ex­cep­tion­al tal­ent and at the ‘Car­ni­val of Speed’ event which saw lo­cal rid­ers up against a num­ber of in­ter­na­tion­als, he out­did him­self by pro­duc­ing a blis­ter­ing 10.734 sec­onds to be pos­si­bly the first ju­nior rid­er to dip un­der the 11-sec­ond bar­ri­er in the fly­ing 200 me­tres.

Rep­re­sent­ing the JLD Acad­e­my un­der coach Njisane Phillip, the Tabaquite young­ster left all oth­er rid­ers in his shad­ow and high­light­ed his po­ten­tial to be a sprint ace in the fu­ture.

In that race, James had the sec­ond-fastest time at 11.394 with Gar­cia and Mo­hammed tak­ing the oth­er two spots.

Mean­while, Black­man-Coop­er praised the per­for­mances of Nicholas Paul, Kwe­si Browne and Ak­il Camp­bell among many oth­er top rid­ers, say­ing their pres­ence was a tremen­dous form of mo­ti­va­tion for the young, as­pir­ing rid­ers who are pur­su­ing a fu­ture in the sport.

Paul claimed the dou­ble gold medal in the match-sprint event and the keirin, in both races he got the bet­ter of his close friend and com­pa­tri­ot Browne in the fi­nals.