The hunt for UCI points for a World Cham­pi­onships berth starts Thurs­day at 5 pm when the UCI-sanc­tioned Class 1 Speed Par­adise ped­als off at the Na­tion­al Cy­cling Cen­tre in Bal­main, Cou­va.

The event gets go­ing with the quar­ter­fi­nals of the Ju­nior/Un­der-23 Women's sprint as well as the quar­ter­fi­nals of the Elite Women's sprint, where sprint sen­sa­tion Makaira Wal­lace will fea­ture, hav­ing told the me­dia she wants to be the first T&T fe­male rid­er to qual­i­fy for the World Cham­pi­onships.

Wal­lace, who told the me­dia she is ac­quaint­ed with most, if not all, her com­peti­tors af­ter last year's Ju­nior Worlds, said she is plan­ning to de­liv­er a sub-11 per­for­mance with the hope of at least mount­ing the podi­um once. Her per­son­al best time has been 10.7 sec­onds un­der al­ti­tude con­di­tions, but at home, she has strug­gled to de­liv­er a sub-11 per­for­mance.

The elite men's sprint will al­so be fea­tured to­day with some of the world's fastest rid­ers, in­clu­sive of T&T's Nicholas Paul, who in Sep­tem­ber 2021, par­tic­i­pat­ed in the UCI Track Na­tions Cy­cling Cup, and came away with triple Golds in the Ki­lo Time Tri­al, Keirin & Sprints, as well as Cana­di­an Nick Wammes and oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al sprint­ers, as well as T&T's Njisane Phillip, a four-time Olympian, and Kwe­si Browne.

Phillip, who re­turned to com­pet­i­tive cy­cling last year, told the me­dia he is hop­ing to pro­duce a 10.8 per­for­mance in the sprints, and will rel­ish the op­por­tu­ni­ty to square off with his T&T sprint ace Paul, who is re­gard­ed as one of the best sprint­ers in the world. "If I can get ahead of him in the sprints," Phillip said.

He al­so called for his lo­cal rid­ers to join forces to get the bet­ter of the in­ter­na­tion­al con­tin­gent in front of home fans. Cy­clists from 14 coun­tries are here for the event, in­clud­ing a full Colom­bian team of more than 10 cy­clists who all touched down on lo­cal soil on Tues­day.

Event or­gan­is­er Robert Far­ri­er said the event will al­so pro­vide the coun­try with an av­enue to rope in valu­able rev­enue through sports tourism, say­ing at the launch that cy­clists will be here in their droves with fam­i­ly and sup­port­ers.

En­try for the event is $80 to­day and $200 for the du­ra­tion of the en­tire Speed Par­adise and Car­ni­val of Speed event, which will take place soon af­ter.