RACHAEL THOMP­SON-KING

rachael.king@guardian.co.tt

T&T cy­clists Nicholas Paul, Kwe­si Brown and Zion Puli­do won the gold medal in the Men’s Team Sprint event at the Pan Amer­i­can Elite Track Cham­pi­onships in San Luis, Li­ma, Pe­ru, last night.

The lo­cal men’s sprint team faced Cana­da’s Tyler Rorke, Nick Wammes and James Hedg­cock in the fi­nal and raced to vic­to­ry in a time of 43.860 sec­onds. The Cana­di­ans clocked 43.863.

The Colom­bia team of Car­los Echev­er­ri, Juan David Ochoa and San­ti­a­go Ramirez and the Mex­i­can trio of Ma­lo Ri­d­ley, Edgar Ver­dugo and Juan Ruiz rode for bronze, but it was Colom­bians (44.026) pre­vail­ing with the Mex­i­cans (46.794), tak­ing fourth.

The team sprint is a three-lap race where each rid­er will do a lap, and then with­draw, leav­ing one rid­er to fin­ish the last lap. The T&T team of Paul, the reign­ing Com­mon­wealth Games triple-medal­list (keirin - gold, sprint - sil­ver 1,000m time tri­al - bronze), Brown and Puli­do had a strong first-round qual­i­fi­er which put them in the fi­nal against the Cana­di­ans.

T&T dom­i­nat­ed Venezuela’s team of Yor­ber Ter­an, Adamil Aguero, Her­sony Cane­lo in heat two of four in the first round. The lo­cal cy­clists com­plet­ed the three laps in a time 43.973.

This af­ter, the lo­cal trio qual­i­fied from the qual­i­fi­ca­tion round with the third fastest time of 44.585 at a speed of 60.558 km/h be­hind Cana­da (44.426) and Colom­bia (44.558), re­spec­tive­ly.

Mex­i­co with 45.300, USA (Dal­ton Wal­ters, Evan Boone, Ge­neway Tng) with 46.211, Venezuela with 46.385, Ar­genti­na (Yoel Var­gas, Lu­cas Vi­lar, Fran­co Vic­to­rio) with 47.284 and Chile (Joaquin Fuen­za­l­i­da, Diego Fuen­za­l­i­da, Vi­cente Ramirez) with 47.803, com­plet­ed the top eight teams which moved on to the first round.

Sil­ver-medal­list Cana­da ad­vanced to the fi­nal af­ter elim­i­nat­ing Chile with a 43.73-clock­ing in heat four while Mex­i­co (45.56) up­staged the Amer­i­cans in heat one and Colom­bia (44.18) in heat three, out­raced Ar­genti­na.

Lat­er, T&T’s Alexi Cos­ta Ramirez placed sixth in the women’s Scratch 10km Race which was won by Bar­ba­dos’s Am­ber Joseph.

An­oth­er T&T cy­clist, Ak­il Camp­bell, was up next in the men’s Elim­i­na­tion Race on the open­ing day of the Cham­pi­onships and he too was a sixth-place fin­ish­er.

Cana­da’s Dy­lan Bibic won gold with Colom­bia’s Jor­dan Par­ra the sil­ver medal­list and Amer­i­can Ed­dy Hun­st­man, the bronze medal­list. Al­so fin­ish­ing ahead of Camp­bell was Bar­ba­di­an Jamol East­mon in fourth with Chris­t­ian Ar­ru­a­ga­da of Chile in the fifth spot.