Lead­ing T&T cy­clist Njisane Phillip took his record break­ing form to the Pan Amer­i­can Cy­cling Cham­pi­onship in Mar del Pla­ta, Ar­genti­na, where he struck gold ahead of ri­val Venezuela's Her­sony Canelon in the Sprint event, on Mon­day night.

The feat saw 20-year-old Phillip be­come the sec­ond T&T cy­clist to medal at the Pan Amer­i­can Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships. He al­so be­came the fourth T&T born rid­er to qual­i­fy for the Olympic Games, be­hind Gene Samuel, Roger Gib­bon and Clyde Rim­ple. Phillip beat Canelon in two straight races to win the fi­nal, hav­ing al­so won two in a row to edge Co­lum­bia's Fabi­an Puer­ta dur­ing the semi­fi­nals ear­li­er in the day.

Speak­ing on Phillip's achieve­ment, Min­is­ter of Sport Anil Roberts de­scribed Njisane's qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the Lon­don 2012 Su­um­mer Olympics as "a proud mo­ment for T&T, and comes at an op­por­tune time as con­struc­tion of the Na­tion­al Velo­drome will com­mence in April this year." The project is val­ued at $259m and is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by 2015. Phillip, ac­cord­ing to Roberts is, "ma­tur­ing in­to an ac­com­plished rid­er, whose strat­e­gy, tac­tics and con­fi­dence are reap­ing re­wards." Phillip, along with com­rade Quin­cy Alexan­der, was set to take part in the Kierin yes­ter­day.