Venezue­lan sprint­er Her­sony Canelon, who re­cent­ly rewrote Njisane Phillip's fly­ing 200m Pan Amer­i­can record, will be among sev­er­al world class cy­clists set to par­tic­i­pate at the 2013 East­er Grand Prix from March 29-31.

The event brand­ed "The Road to Rio Stars Here" will be host­ed by the T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion (TTCF) in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of Sport and the Sport Com­pa­ny of Trinidad & To­ba­go (SporTT), with the lat­ter two han­dling the brunt of ex­pens­es.

The first two days (March 29 and 30) will be staged at the Ari­ma Velo­drome, be­fore the fi­nal day of races (East­er Sun­day) is staged at Skin­ner Park, San Fer­nan­do.

De­scribed as T&T cy­cling's flag­ship event by spe­cial ad­vi­sor to the Min­istry of Sport Caryl Kel­lar at the event's launch at the Min­istry of Sport, Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, the three-day com­pe­ti­tion will at­tract top cy­clists from Cu­ba, Ja­maica, Guyana, Mex­i­co, Colom­bia, many of whom have al­ready con­firmed their par­tic­i­pa­tion.

"Our sprint­er Njisane Phillip has a big job on his hands," said Kel­lar, as he named some of the top ath­letes in­vit­ed to the event, which al­so in­cludes Colom­bia's Fabi­an Puer­ta, a 21-year-old World Cup dou­ble gold medal win­ner.

"If you want to see some re­al world class sprint­ing, you have to be at the Grand Prix this year. In think this is the first time in many, many years that we will see this cal­i­bre of cy­cling in T&T," he added.

No names have yet been is­sued for the lo­cal team, but it will com­prise six men and two women. The names are ex­pect­ed to be re­leased with­in two weeks.

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