Clydeen Mc­Don­ald

Na­tion­al cy­cling coach Erin Hartwell is in high praise of T&T's six-mem­ber team, who were card­ed to be­gin com­pe­ti­tion at the Ju­nior Pan Amer­i­can Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships in Mex­i­co, yes­ter­day. Hartwell said the cy­clists, who has been in train­ing at the US Olympic Train­ing Cen­tre in Col­orado Springs, Col­orado, for the past week has made a tremen­dous ef­fort to be pre­pared for the event and are set to do T&T proud when they take to the track.

Hartwell said, "So far the camp and the oth­er prepa­ra­tion for the Cham­pi­onships has gone be­yond ex­pec­ta­tions. All of the rid­ers have re­spond­ed well to the chal­lenges of al­ti­tude and have shown me they are com­mit­ted to do­ing well for T&T. Hav­ing worked with them over this pe­ri­od I can cer­tain­ly say they are a tal­ent­ed bunch and they give me a lot of hope for the com­pe­ti­tion and the fu­ture of T&T cy­cling." The team is made up of 17-year-olds Rudy Ash­ton, Varun Ma­haraj and Denise Fran­cis and 16-year-olds Qua­cy Browne, Quin­cy Alexan­der and Jodie Goodridge.

Alexan­der be­came the coun­try's youngest Pan Am medal­list last year when he won a bronze medal in the Team Sprint with Njisane Phillip and Theri­eff Smart. Dur­ing the Na­tion­al Cham­pi­onships at the Ari­ma Velor­drome re­cent­ly, Alexan­der set new ju­nior records in the Match Sprint (11.39) and Kilo­me­tre (1:10.3) while Ash­ton came with­in three hun­dredths of a sec­ond of break­ing the In­di­vid­ual Pur­suit record. Hartwell spent three years liv­ing at the Col­orado Springs fa­cil­i­ty from 1989 to 1992 and said it was in­stru­men­tal in his own ca­reer dur­ing which he won two Olympic medals.

Alexan­der and Browne will be com­pet­ing in the Sprint, Keirin, Kilo­me­tre and Team Sprint events, Goodridge and Fran­cis in the 500m, Team Sprint and Keirin. Ma­haraj and Ash­ton will take part in the Om­ni­um, In­di­vid­ual Pur­suit, Scratch and Points Race. The Cham­pi­onships will take place at the Cen­tro Na­cional De De­sar­il­lo De Tal­en­tos and the Al­to Rendi­nen­to in Mex­i­co City, Mex­i­co. The sport fa­cil­i­ty, know as "CNAR" is the Mex­i­can Na­tion­al Train­ing Cen­tre for a va­ri­ety of sport, in­clud­ing cy­cling. The track com­pe­ti­tion will take place from to­day to Thurs­day while the road com­ple­tion will start from next week Sun­day.