Ak­il Camp­bell, one of T&T’s top wheel­men, has been forced to miss the open­ing leg of the 2022 Tis­sot UCI Track Na­tions Cup, which be­gins at the Sir Chris Hoy Velo­drome in Glas­gow, Scot­land, to­day.

Camp­bell was set to join Tokyo 2020 Sum­mer Olympians Kwe­si Browne and Nicholas Paul at the event, how­ev­er, dif­fi­cul­ty in at­tain­ing his trav­el doc­u­ments has left him ground­ed in T&T.

Orig­i­nal­ly, the en­tire lo­cal­ly-based con­tin­gent of Camp­bell, Browne, team man­ag­er Ian Cole and me­chan­ic Eli­jah Greene, was sup­posed to trav­el to Lon­don via Mi­a­mi, and then on to Scot­land to join Switzer­land-based Paul. How­ev­er, af­ter Camp­bell had ini­ti­at­ed his Unit­ed States visa ap­pli­ca­tion to be able to trav­el along that route, those plans were changed and the four mem­bers were booked to trav­el di­rect­ly from T&T to Am­s­ter­dam in the Nether­lands in­stead. This sit­u­a­tion was fur­ther ex­ac­er­bat­ed by a staff short­age at the US Em­bassy ac­cord­ing to Camp­bell.

Browne, Cole and Greene trav­elled on Sun­day, April 17, with­out the 26-year-old who won gold in the men’s scratch race at the most re­cent Na­tions Cup leg in Cali, Colom­bia, last Sep­tem­ber. A per­for­mance that earned him a de­but World Cham­pi­onships ap­pear­ance in France in Oc­to­ber 2021.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia Sports on Tues­day fol­low­ing a suc­cess­ful cam­paign at the T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion’s (TTCF) East­er Grand Prix from April 15-17 where he won 10 out of his 12 races, Camp­bell shared his dis­ap­point­ment at the turn of events.

“I tried to get it ex­pe­dit­ed and it was to no use. I was hop­ing to get it back by at least last week but it didn’t work out that way. Ap­par­ent­ly, the US Em­bassy is short-staffed as they stat­ed in an email. Help from the Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) and al­so the Sports Com­pa­ny (SPORTT) went fu­tile. So it’s not like we didn’t try.”

The de­vel­op­ment leaves Camp­bell to re­assess his ear­ly-sea­son plans as this Na­tions Cup event was sup­posed to see him el­e­vat­ing his prepa­ra­tions for the Com­mon­wealth Games and Tis­sot UCI Track Cy­cling World Cham­pi­onships lat­er this year. Camp­bell says he had hoped to com­pete in Scot­land, miss the next leg in Mil­ton, Cana­da, from May 12-15 and re­sume com­pe­ti­tion in Cali, Colom­bia (Ju­ly 7-10) lead­ing to the Com­mon­wealth Games at the end of Ju­ly in Birm­ing­ham, Eng­land.

“For me as an en­durance ath­lete, it will be bet­ter to ac­tu­al­ly try to race as close to com­pe­ti­tion as pos­si­ble. So I would have raced this one and skipped the sec­ond one, have a big­ger train­ing block up un­til the third Na­tions Cup and be ready for Com­mon­wealth Games.”

He added, “One of the rea­sons I didn’t want to do the sec­ond one al­so is that it is clash­ing with the Pan Amer­i­can Road Cham­pi­onships. That was al­so on my cal­en­dar. I’m not too sure as yet but I will have to fig­ure it out be­tween this week in­to next week and re­fo­cus my train­ing.”

Camp­bell says he may be forced to con­tem­plate com­pet­ing in Mil­ton, Cana­da, next month.

When the in­di­vid­ual sprint events on the first leg of the 2022 Tis­sot UCI Track Na­tions Cup sea­son be­gin in Glas­gow on Fri­day morn­ing, like their in­ter­na­tion­al coun­ter­parts, Nicholas Paul and Kwe­si Browne will vie for wins and for cu­mu­lat­ed points. These points will count to­wards the al­lot­ment of qual­i­fi­ca­tion quo­tas for their re­spec­tive fed­er­a­tions at the 2022 Tis­sot UCI Track World Cham­pi­onships in Mon­tigny-le-Bre­ton­neux, France from Oc­to­ber 12-16 and fur­ther ahead - the Olympic Games in Paris 2024.

This first Na­tions Cup in Scot­land will be fol­lowed by meets in Mil­ton, Cana­da (May 12-15) and Cali, Colom­bia (Ju­ly 7-10).

Ahead of his de­par­ture from T&T Browne told Guardian Me­dia Sports that this leg was dou­bly-cru­cial to him build­ing on his de­but Olympic ap­pear­ance in Tokyo last year. In the lead up to the games, Browne trained along­side Paul in Switzer­land but has since had to train at home due to a lack of fi­nan­cial re­sources.

How­ev­er, Browne has been en­cour­aged by his per­for­mances at the T&T Na­tion­al Cham­pi­onships in March, which in­clud­ed a blis­ter­ing 10.106 sec­onds in the Fly­ing 200m on his way to win­ning the in­di­vid­ual Sprint and Keirin ti­tles.

"I am hap­py where I am at but I am go­ing off of per­for­mances sole­ly from Na­tion­als. It is not the same lev­el as in­ter­na­tion­al rid­ing in terms of the rac­ing but the Fly­ing 200m time was a good gauge as well as my times in train­ing. So my goal ac­tu­al­ly is to make the Keirin fi­nal at the first two Na­tions Cups and if that hap­pens, hope­ful­ly, it po­si­tions me for the rest of the sea­son so that I can skip the third one and pre­pare for the Com­mon­wealth Games."

Team­mate Paul closed the 2021 Na­tions Cup run with triple gold in Cali, Colom­bia in Sep­tem­ber, win­ning the men's in­di­vid­ual Time Tri­al, Sprint and Keirin to cap a fine year in the sad­dle.

But im­por­tant­ly he knows that this sea­son starts again at nought.

"It's a new sea­son so you nev­er know where you're at un­til you start rac­ing. But train­ing has been go­ing well so I am all con­fi­dent and ready to go. To see where I am at and to see what I have to work on."

A world record-hold­er in the Fly­ing 200m with 9.100 sec­onds set at the Elite Pan Amer­i­can Cham­pi­onships in Bo­livia, Paul has be­come one of the pre­mier and most ex­cit­ing sprint­ers in the sport. He made his Olympic de­but at the 2020 Tokyo games reach­ing the fi­nals in both the Sprint and the Keirin be­fore a se­ries of fur­ther pore-rais­ing per­for­mances at the in­au­gur­al UCI Track Cy­cling Cham­pi­ons League. The achieve­ments have made him a tar­get, which he has come to ex­pect and says he al­so re­turns the favour to his many op­po­nents.

"It's al­ways a part of train­ing the mind, I think. Watch­ing dif­fer­ent races, watch­ing over your races and just plan­ning tac­ti­cal­ly what you can do in dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions. Every race you would want to go all out but it's about how you ex­e­cute. And go­ing in­to Glas­gow I want to be able to ex­e­cute my rid­ers one hun­dred and fifty per­cent and take ad­van­tage of any short­com­ings of the com­pe­ti­tion."