T&T men’s team of Boyd twin broth­ers Ah­keel and Ah­keem, Chike Au­gus­tine, and Mori­ba De Fre­itas—the un­der­dogs—pulled off a huge up­set in their open­ing match of the 3x3 bas­ket­ball com­pe­ti­tion at the Pan Amer­i­can Games in Chile, de­feat­ing the 59th world ranked team, the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, 22-15.

The win gave the lo­cal team, which is ranked 82nd in the world, one foot in­to to­day’s quar­ter­fi­nals af­ter falling to Puer­to Ri­co, the 13th ranked team in its sec­ond match, 21-6.

The ex­cite­ment un­fold­ed on the court at the Span­ish Sta­di­um in the Las Con­des re­gion, and in both match­es, the team, coached by Christo­pher Jack­son Charles, was led by the ath­let­ic Boyd sib­lings.

Against the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, this year’s Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) Games bronze medal­list, Ah­keel top-scored with 13 points, hit­ting four bas­kets from be­yond the three-point arc which in 3x3 bas­ket­ball equals two points.

Lat­er in an en­ter­tain­ing bat­tle against the reign­ing CAC cham­pi­on, his broth­er led the scor­ing with four points, scor­ing two-point­ers.

Their progress will be de­ter­mined by the re­sult of to­day’s fi­nal group match be­tween Puer­to Ri­co and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic.

Bad­minton play­ers

De Boulet ad­vances, Mar­cano oust­ed

Cheque­da De Boulet and Marc Re­ece Mar­cano had mixed re­sults in their re­spec­tive sin­gles match­es in the bad­minton com­pe­ti­tion at San­ti­a­go 2023.

In the af­ter­noon ses­sion at the Olympic Train­ing Cen­tre in Nunoa, De Boulet was in­volved in a grip­ping bat­tle with 17th-ranked Daniela Her­nan­dez of EL Sal­vador and emerged with a 2-1 vic­to­ry in the pre­lim­i­nary round of 32 match-ups.

The un­ranked T&T play­er start­ed shaky and dropped the first game 9-21. She came back stronger and dom­i­nat­ed Her­nan­dez in the sec­ond game (21-10), to lev­el the match, and force a de­cider.

In the fi­nal game, both De Boulet and Her­nan­dez went toe-to-toe but in the end, it was the T&T bad­minton play­er who pre­vailed 23-21 in the 40-minute match.

De Boulet moves on to meet Nik­te So­tomay­or of the In­de­pen­dent Ath­letes Team in to­day’s round of 16 match.

Ear­li­er, Mar­cano suf­fered a 21-9, 21-8 de­feat at the hands of Adri­ano Viale of Pe­ru in his open­ing clash.

“It was a tough match. I think I didn’t play my best but that’s on me,” said Mar­cano af­ter the match. “He came with a fight. I was ex­pect­ing to put on a bet­ter show­ing.”

Next door in the box­ing com­pe­ti­tion at the Nunoa venue, box­er Al-Jaleel Johku had his men’s 51kg pre­lim­i­nary round of 16 con­test against Her­ney Mar­tinez of Colom­bia stopped by the ref­er­ee in round three.

“I could have done a lit­tle bet­ter,” said Johku af­ter the bout, adding that he needs to go back to the gym to work on his fit­ness.

At the Chimkowe Gym­na­si­um, weightlifter Karin Singh placed tenth among the 11 com­peti­tors.

The 31-year-old, com­pet­ing in the 49kg weight class in Group A to­talled 111kg. She post­ed a best ef­fort of 49kg in the snatch and 62kg in the clean and jerk cat­e­gories.

Dahi­ana Or­tiz of the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic won gold with a to­tal of 190kg, Katherin Echan­dia of Venezuela copped the sil­ver with 189kg and Beat­riz Piron al­so of Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic bagged the bronze medal­list with 181kg.

Cy­clist Nicholas Paul and box­er Tian­na Guy set aside their com­pet­i­tive side to lead T&T in the pa­rade of 38 coun­tries dur­ing the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny at San­ti­a­go 2023 Pan Amer­i­can Games in Chile on Fri­day night.

The duo as well as all the ath­letes at Chile’s Na­tion­al Sta­di­um were all smiles, dressed in their re­spec­tive na­tion­al colours, beam­ing with pride to of­fi­cial­ly open the 19th edi­tion of the Games.

“It was an ho­n­our,” said Guy yes­ter­day. “I think it was so fit­ting this be­ing my first Pan Am Games and the first time I ever car­ried the flag at an open­ing cer­e­mo­ny at any Games.”

The live­ly, colour­ful show which in­clud­ed spe­cial ef­fects, rock, and ur­ban mu­sic en­ter­tained the filled stands as Chile’s cul­ture was on full dis­play for the Pan Am re­gion, brought to life by some 5,000 per­form­ers.

The ath­letes and sup­port­ers alike had an equal amount of fun as they waved, blew kiss­es, danced and sev­er­al caught the mo­ment on cam­era via their cell phones.

Guy en­joyed the down-pe­ri­od with her com­pa­tri­ots but her mind re­mained fo­cused on her de­but bout to­day. She will punch her way in­to ac­tion at 10.15 am (T&T time) in the women’s 60kg pre­lim­i­nar­ies—round of 16 di­vi­sion against Colom­bian Ang­ie Valdes Pana.

“My fight to­mor­row (to­day) is against a strong op­po­nent from Colom­bia, a sil­ver medal­list at the World Cham­pi­onships and gold medal­list at CAC (Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean) Games, so it’s go­ing to be a stiff com­pe­ti­tion. She isn’t a pushover and won’t al­low me to get away with much mis­takes,” said Guy, analysing her op­po­nent.

“How­ev­er, I my­self have grown a lot in the sport through the ex­pe­ri­ence I have gained at com­pet­ing at the high­est lev­els. I con­sid­er my­self to be a strong op­po­nent as well, and like­wise, I won’t let her get away with sil­ly mis­takes. “Over­all, I think it will be an ex­cit­ing fight. I’m ex­cit­ed and ready to ex­e­cute what I’ve been work­ing on.”

Fel­low flag-bear­er Paul is back to de­fend his men’s sprint ti­tle. How­ev­er, he will first be on track at the Velo­drome on Tues­day along with team­mates Kwe­si Browne and Zion Puli­do in the men’s team sprint event. The qual­i­fi­ca­tion round is at 10.41 am (T&T time) with the fi­nal at 5.05 pm. The fol­low­ing day, the qual­i­fi­ca­tion round in the men’s sprint event will speed off at 9.05 a.m. (T&T time).

Paul is the world record-hold­er in the men’s 200m fly­ing start, so ex­pect fire­works, sim­i­lar to those that lit up the sky, fol­low­ing Colom­bian com­pos­er and singer Se­bas­t­ian Ya­tra’s high-en­er­gy per­for­mance to close the show and of­fi­cial­ly open San­ti­a­go 2023.

Quite fit­ting as the 2027 ver­sion of the Pan Am Games will be held in Bar­ran­quil­la, Colom­bia.