Fol­low­ing his his­to­ry-mak­ing mo­ment as the first Trinidad and To­ba­go and Caribbean moun­tain bik­er to com­pete in Down­hill at the UCI Moun­tain Bike World Cham­pi­onships in Val di Sole, Italy, on Thurs­day, Tyriq Springer has noth­ing but grat­i­tude for the sup­port he re­ceived.

​Springer faced just one ride on the in­fa­mous “Black Snake” cir­cuit, con­sid­ered one of the tough­est tracks in the sport. The Paramin na­tive fin­ished just three places shy of a qual­i­fy­ing berth, plac­ing 83rd in a field that com­prised the world’s best down­hill moun­tain bike rid­ers.

​New Zealand’s Lach­lan Steven-Mc­Nab topped the qual­i­fiers in a time of 3:34.010, just edg­ing out Aus­tralia’s Oliv­er Davis (3:34.341) in sec­ond po­si­tion, with Cana­da’s Jack­son Gold­stone (3:34.643) fin­ish­ing third.

​The 19-year-old Springer clocked a speed of 47.123 km/h for his fin­ish at 4:48.545, reach­ing his first split at 33.891 and his sec­ond at 2:15.839. Main­tain­ing a con­sis­tent pace, the T&T rid­er touched his third tim­ing check at 3:02.346 and his fourth at 4:00.913.

​He told Guardian Me­dia Sports yes­ter­day he was thrilled with his per­for­mance, de­spite miss­ing out on the fi­nal. Car­ry­ing the hopes of a twin-is­land na­tion, the Paramin rid­er dis­played the red, white, and black of Trinidad and To­ba­go in fine style, start­ing ex­plo­sive­ly and skil­ful­ly nav­i­gat­ing his way to the fin­ish line on a cir­cuit he was rid­ing for the very first time.

“I would say go­ing in­to the event, I had lit­tle to no down­hill ex­pe­ri­ence, so com­ing here and rid­ing down­hill, which ar­guably is the hard­est World Cup track in the world and com­plet­ing a run, and just mak­ing it off the oth­er side, it’s an ho­n­our. It’s a big achieve­ment for me. And the sup­port I got com­ing here, it’s un­be­liev­able,” Springer ex­plained.

He not­ed fur­ther, “Every­one came to­geth­er- my dad, my par­ents, my man­ag­er, every­one, the me­chan­ic. So many peo­ple came to­geth­er and made it hap­pen, so I am noth­ing but grate­ful and I’m shocked.”

Springer was up to Sat­ur­day, skip­ping from flight to flight as he made his way back home. He is set to get back on his bike short­ly to be­gin prepa­ra­tions for up­com­ing events.