T&T’s Olympians cy­clist Nicholas Paul and long jumper Tyra Git­tens copped the First Cit­i­zens Sports Foun­da­tion Sports­man and Sports­woman of the Year Awards for 2021 at the vir­tu­al event which was broad­cast on CNC3 tele­vi­sion on Sat­ur­day night.

The 59th edi­tion of the an­nu­al gala event was ti­tled A Jour­ney Be­yond Hope.

The ten fi­nal­ists for the men’s and women’s awards were—Nicholas Paul (cy­cling), Tyra Git­tens (ath­let­ics), An­drew Lewis (sail­ing), Saman­tha Wal­lace (net­ball), Jereem Richards (ath­let­ics), Te­niel Camp­bell (cy­cling), Nigel Paul (box­ing), Fe­lice Aisha Chow (row­ing), Dy­lan Carter (swim­ming), and Ken­nya Cord­ner (foot­ball).

Paul, 23, placed sixth and 12th in the men’s sprint and keirin re­spec­tive­ly in his ef­forts to cap­ture T&T’s first world medal in some three decades.

He ped­alled to a sil­ver medal in the 1km time tri­al at the UCI Track World Cham­pi­onships in Roubaix, France, last Oc­to­ber, when he clocked 59.269 sec­onds to fin­ish 0.523 sec­onds be­hind Dutch­man Jef­frey Hoog­land.

This fol­lowed his three gold medals at the UCI Na­tions Cup in Cali, Colom­bia, in the 1km time tri­al, keirin and sprint events. He al­so earned a sil­ver medal in the sprint at the UCI Track Cham­pi­ons League event in Pan­evezys, Lithua­nia.

Mean­while, Git­tens, 23, lift­ed her first Sports­woman of the year ho­n­ours. She was out­stand­ing for Texas A&M Uni­ver­si­ty in the NCAA Track and Field Cham­pi­onships and then made it to the fi­nals of the women’s long jump at the Tokyo2020 Games to fin­ish in tenth place.

Among her col­le­giate high­lights was the pen­tathlon ti­tle she cap­tured at the NCAA In­door Cham­pi­onships in Fayet­teville, Arkansas with 4,746 points and the hep­tathlon crown claimed at the NCAA Out­door Na­tion­als in Eu­gene, Ore­gon, with 6,285 points.

In the Youth cat­e­go­ry, swim­mer Nikoli Black­man fol­lowed up his 2020 achieve­ment by be­ing crowed the 2021 Youth Sports­man of The Year, for the sec­ond time in a row, while ten­nis play­er Jor­dane Dook­ie was named Youth Sports­woman of the Year. Both were among eight fi­nal­ists that were short­list­ed for the top awards.