T&T closed the first day of com­pe­ti­tion in the two-man bob­sleigh com­pe­ti­tion at the on­go­ing Win­ter Olympic Games in Bei­jing, Chi­na in 27th place of the 30 coun­tries on Mon­day.

At the Yan­qing Na­tion­al Slid­ing Cen­tre, the lo­cal team of pi­lot Ax­el Brown and brake­man An­dre Mar­cano man­aged a com­bined time of two min­utes and 01.70 sec­onds (2:01.70) af­ter the first two heats.

T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) pres­i­dent Bri­an Lewis was present to cheer on British-born Brown and Mar­cano along with al­ter­nate ath­lete Sha­keel John, TTOC sec­re­tary gen­er­al An­nette Knott, Chef de Mis­sion Lovie San­tana and COVID Li­ai­son Of­fi­cer (CLO) Rheeza Grant.

"In the con­text of where T&T pro­gramme would have come from it's a de­cent day at the of­fice," said Lewis yes­ter­day af­ter the two heats. "What was im­por­tant fin­ish­ing, com­plet­ing thje course, not crash­ing so all in all a good day at the of­fice for Team TTO and cred­it to the team."

In the open­ing slide the T&T pair, sup­port­ed by their coach Thomas Har­ris, clocked 1:00.81 to fin­ish 28th with a start time of 5.33. Top­ping the open­ing heat was joint de­fend­ing cham­pi­on, the Ger­man team of pi­lot Francesco Friedrich and brake­man Thorsten Mar­gis with a record-break­ing slide of 59.02 to bet­ter the track record and al­so break the start record with 4.94. Ger­many oth­er team of Jo­hannes Lochn­er and Flo­ri­an Bauer with 59.26 sits in sec­ond place while third is the Russ­ian Olympic Com­mit­tee (ROC) team of Ros­tislav Gaitiuke­vich and Alek­sei Laptev (59.41).

Af­ter heat two, the top three re­mained un­changed with Friedrich and Mar­gis in first place with a com­bined time of 1:58.38, Lochn­er and Bauer (1:58.53), and Gaitiuke­vich and Laptev (1:59.32), in sec­ond and third place, re­spec­tive­ly.

Fel­low joint reign­ing cham­pi­on Cana­da's Justin Kripps and new part­ner Cam Stones, are in 10th spot with an ac­cu­mu­lat­ed time of 1:59.69.

T&T re­turned in the sec­ond heat with a 1:00.89-tim­ing to move up to 27th po­si­tion, re­spec­tive­ly, ahead of USA ‘B' team (2:01.78), Brazil (2:02.47), and Ja­maica (Shan­wayne Stephens and Nim­roy Tur­gott) with 2:02.58.

Lewis added: "A lot to be proud of. T&T Team TTO is the first time back at the Win­ter Olympics af­ter two decades and the guys rep­re­sent­ed them­selves with pride and ho­n­our.

"As I said, it's about punch­ing above your weight. There is a lot that you can point to in terms of oth­er teams, in terms of re­sources, in terms of cost of the sled, in terms of the ex­pe­ri­ence fac­tor so in TTOC's per­spec­tive, we are very proud about the ef­fort put out by Team TTO here in Bei­jing to­day (Mon­day) so it's about rest­ing up for to­mor­row (Tues­day) and giv­ing it your best shot."

The third slide takes place on Tues­day from 8.15 am (TT time) and each na­tion’s three rides will be tal­lied and the 20 fastest coun­tries, ac­cord­ing to their ac­cu­mu­lat­ed times, will ad­vance to the medal round (fourth round). In this round, each coun­try will race once and the fastest three times of the fourth round will de­ter­mine first, sec­ond and third.