Ris­ing cy­cling tal­ents Phoebe Sandy and De­vante Lau­rence will rep­re­sent T&T at the UCI Track Cy­cling Ju­nior World Cham­pi­onships, Au­gust 23-27 in Tel Aviv, Is­rael.

Sandy, 18, cruised to the qual­i­fy­ing time of 12.3 sec­onds by pro­duc­ing a blis­ter­ing 12.1 sec­onds at the qual­i­fiers at the Na­tion­al Cy­cling Cen­tre (NCC) in Bal­main, Cou­va, ear­li­er this year, but Lau­rence who did not make the qual­i­fy­ing stan­dard earned a dis­cre­tionary pick from the T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion. `

Last month, Lau­rence, through his club Ari­ma Wheel­ers Cy­cle Club (AW­CC), suc­cess­ful­ly filed a High Court in­junc­tion to pre­vent the cy­cling fed­er­a­tion (TTCF) from reg­is­ter­ing its se­lect­ed cy­clists for the Ju­nior Worlds.

The af­fi­davit filed by AW­CC pres­i­dent Joel Browne, stat­ed that the de­ci­sion by the TTCF to not se­lect Lau­rence based on him not at­tain­ing the qual­i­fy­ing stan­dard in the Fly­ing 200m, de­spite him reg­is­ter­ing the fastest time dur­ing the qual­i­fiers, was in­her­ent­ly flawed.

Ac­cord­ing to the court fil­ings in the case, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, on March 1, the fed­er­a­tion in­formed Lau­rence and the club that the tri­als for the event, which is sched­uled to be held in Tel Aviv, Is­rael, next month, would be held on May 7.

Lau­rence, who was re­cov­er­ing from a grade two mus­cle tear in­jury, was giv­en a de­ferred date in June to un­der­go his tri­al. He com­plet­ed the tri­al and record­ed the fastest time in the Ju­nior Men Fly­ing 200m Sprint and the Keirin, with a time of 11.518 sec­onds.

The club wrote to the fed­er­a­tion re­quest­ing that Lau­rence be se­lect­ed to rep­re­sent the coun­try at the event.

The fed­er­a­tion claimed that he could not be se­lect­ed as he did not meet the qual­i­fy­ing stan­dard re­quired un­der its pol­i­cy and pro­ce­dure for lo­cal and for­eign com­pe­ti­tions.

Af­ter be­ing se­lect­ed last month, Lau­rance made an apeal to Fund­met­nt for do­na­tions up to press time he had raised $29,761 from his tar­get of TT$59,000 which rep­re­sents 50 per­cent of his to­tal.

The team of Sandy, Lau­rence and coach Gre­go­ry Dan­drade will leave on Fri­day.

Yes­ter­day, Sandy said she will be tar­get­ing podi­um fin­ish­es and be­lieves she has what it takes to achieve it. She will con­test the fly­ing 200 me­tres, which will hope­ful­ly qual­i­fy her for the match sprint that fol­lows. She will al­so com­pete in the 500m sprints and the keirin event. Her first race will be on Au­gust 24 with the fly­ing 200m.

Sandy said she has done re­search on her po­ten­tial com­peti­tors at the Worlds and has re­alised that they're all do­ing sim­i­lar times.

"I want to do well. I in­tend to put my best foot for­ward and rep­re­sent my coun­try and I be­lieve I can do that," Sandy said. Sandy, who made the qual­i­fy­ing time for the Ju­nior Worlds in Egypt last year, did not go be­cause of no fund­ing.

She al­so made the qual­i­fy­ing stan­dard for the Pan Am Un­der-23 Youth Games but was too young to at­tend.