"Pre­pare for Speed."

It is the theme be­hind the com­ing UCI-sanc­tioned Class 1 'Speed Par­adise' and 'Car­ni­val of Speed' events, which will get go­ing at the Na­tion­al Cy­cling Cen­tre (NCC) in Bal­main, Cou­va, from Thurs­day at 5 pm.

Sprint­ers Njisane Phillip and his un­der­study Makaira Wal­lace will join forces with com­pa­tri­ots Nicholas Paul and Kwe­si Browne to take on the rest of the in­ter­na­tion­al con­tin­gent from Great Britain, Cana­da, Swe­den, Slo­va­kia, and Colom­bia, among oth­er na­tions. Wal­lace, a sec­ond-placed fin­ish­er at the Ju­nior World Cham­pi­onships last year, is ea­ger to be­come the first fe­male rid­er from T&T to com­pete at the World Cham­pi­onships.

Yes­ter­day, she was among sev­er­al rid­ers pac­ing around the tracks of the NCC in prepa­ra­tion for to­mor­row's open­ing day, which will fea­ture the much-fan­cied sprint events on each day of com­pe­ti­tion at $80 dai­ly or $200 for the en­tire three days of ac­tion.

Or­gan­is­er Robert Far­ri­er of Team DPS said they are ready for ac­tion. The event is de­signed to en­able in­ter­na­tion­al rid­ers the op­por­tu­ni­ty to gar­ner valu­able UCI points for qual­i­fi­ca­tion to the World Cham­pi­onships in Chile lat­er this year.

Wal­lace said she is ac­quaint­ed with her com­peti­tors and is ready to de­liv­er af­ter weeks of in­tense prepa­ra­tion.

"My ex­pec­ta­tion is pret­ty high for me, we've just fin­ished a pret­ty big train­ing block in Cana­da, sev­en weeks, so this event is very im­por­tant for me to qual­i­fy for the World Cham­pi­onship lat­er this year. I ex­pect to pop up on a podi­um even once, and I'm look­ing for a new per­son­al best time here in Cou­va, so I'm re­al­ly ex­cit­ed, so hope­ful­ly, this will help me qual­i­fy and be the first fe­male sprint­er to go to the World Cham­pi­onships for our coun­try," Wal­lace said.

She has a per­son­al best (pb) time of 10.7 un­der al­ti­tude con­di­tions and 11.3 at the NCC, but she is ex­pect­ing to cash in on the hard work done re­cent­ly.

"I have been work­ing a lot on my match sprint tech­nique with my coach Njisane, and we've been do­ing a lot of reps of that to make me get com­fort­able, do­ing race sim­u­la­tion a lot of 200 me­tres and just di­alling in on my fly­ing lap, so those are the two things I've been work­ing on a lot, so I'm look­ing to go sub-11 here. That's my biggest goal."

Slo­va­kian Mar­tin Chren will con­test the en­durance races, name­ly the elim­i­na­tion, scratch and the om­ni­um. As a first-timer at the event, he told the me­dia he is here to pick up UCI points for the World Cham­pi­onships and will be hop­ing to do his best.

"My goal is to reach the podi­um, that's my goal," he said.

Mean­while, four-time Olympian Njisane Phillip is rel­ish­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty to face off against com­pa­tri­ot Nicholas at the event. The mul­ti­ple-time medal­list for T&T re­turned to com­pet­i­tive cy­cling last year and sealed a place on the T&T team, and yes­ter­day he said he is aim­ing at a time of 9.8 sec­onds in the sprints, say­ing any­thing bet­ter than that would be a plus. He added the event will fea­ture some of the best sprint­ers, such as Nick Wammes of Cana­da and oth­er rid­ers from Great Britain and Colom­bia.

How­ev­er, he said T&T sprint ace Paul will be the man to look out for.

"It's great go­ing up against Nicholas Paul, he is a great rid­er, great per­son, and the high­est on the lev­el, so if I can get over him, it will def­i­nite­ly be a feat. It would be good to race against him; we have to give him a lot of re­spect be­cause he will be some­one to watch out for."

T&T's elite sprint­er Kwe­si Browne will al­so com­pete for points.