JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Wednesday, February 26, 2025

T&T's cyclist Paul is world's #1

by

Gyasi Merrique
1257 days ago
20210918
T&T's Nicholas Paul competes during the track cycling men's sprint race at the 2020 Summer Olympics on August 5 in Izu, Japan. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

T&T's Nicholas Paul competes during the track cycling men's sprint race at the 2020 Summer Olympics on August 5 in Izu, Japan. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

Thibault Camus

Nicholas Paul has risen to num­ber one in the men's elite sprint rank­ing fol­low­ing his tre­ble-win­ning per­for­mance at the UCI Na­tions Cup at the Al­cides Ni­eto Pati­no Velo­drome in Colom­bia last week­end where he won gold in the 1km time tri­al, match sprint and keirin events set­ting two new venue records in the process.

Join­ing Paul on the rank­ings list which re­leased on Mon­day is fel­low Na­tions Cup gold medal­list Ak­il Camp­bell af­ter he al­so won gold in the men's elim­i­na­tion race in Colom­bia, T&T's first-ever win in that event on the Na­tions Cup cir­cuit. He is now ranked third in the men's elite elim­i­na­tion rank­ing.

In what was a sen­sa­tion­al ride, Camp­bell bat­tled back from a crash he suf­fered from six rid­ers left in the race. The fall left Camp­bell with a bro­ken bike as well as a bruised hip, how­ev­er, he got back in­to the sad­dle and caught up with the pack be­fore even­tu­al­ly cap­tur­ing the gold medal by win­ning a sprint ahead of Ken­ny de Ketele of Bel­gium.

Speak­ing to the me­dia on Fri­day, Camp­bell said the ac­com­plish­ment has en­er­gized him for the World Cham­pi­onships where he has al­ready qual­i­fied for both the scratch and the elim­i­na­tion races.

"When I fell, I was pret­ty mad be­cause I was on a big stage and want­ed to do the right thing al­ways. But I made a mis­take and got back up. I think it was ba­si­cal­ly adren­a­line that pro­pelled me to win.

Camp­bell added, "It is a re­al­ly good feel­ing to be ranked third in the world at this present time. The next thing for me would be the World Cham­pi­onships in France and hope­ful­ly, I can go there and per­form at my best."

Al­though he has a dam­aged bike Camp­bell said he was try­ing to have it re­placed by ac­cess­ing any avail­able grants from the Sports Com­pa­ny of T&T (SporTT). Pres­i­dent of the T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion Rowe­na Williams con­firmed that the fed­er­a­tion would as­sist Camp­bell, how­ev­er, they could.

25-year-old Camp­bell, a for­mer Caribbean ju­nior road cy­cling gold medal­ist and a mul­ti-time na­tion­al cham­pi­on has en­joyed a stel­lar 2021 so far. In June he won the men's scratch race at the Elite Pan Amer­i­can Cham­pi­onships which was al­so a first-ever for T&T.

When asked about what has con­tributed most to his pur­ple patch of re­sults, Camp­bell heaped praise on his sis­ter Te­niel who her­self is a pi­o­neer­ing en­durance rid­er on the Eu­ro­pean cir­cuit.

"This year my sis­ter was help­ing me a lot more with coach­ing wise and with my in­ter­vals, so I think that has been the biggest thing for me this year," he said.

Mean­while, Williams said the re­cent ac­com­plish­ments have served to height­en the pro­file of the sport and com­mit­ted her or­gan­i­sa­tion to cap­i­tal­ize on the in­creased ex­po­sure.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored