A four-mem­ber team of Ja­van Ram­roop, Ju­dah Nev­er­son, Kyrah Williams and Je­lani Nedd will rep­re­sent the red, white and black of T&T at the com­ing Ju­nior Pan Amer­i­can Games in Pe­ru in Ju­ly.

The games will ped­al off from Ju­ly 18, and the four-mem­ber team is hop­ing to leave lo­cal shores four days be­fore on Ju­ly 14. Chair­man of Rac­ing in the T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion (TTCF) Gre­go­ry Dan­drade said the fed­er­a­tion is still in the process of lob­by­ing for funds from the gov­ern­ment for the quar­tet to go.

The team will be coached by Robert Far­ri­er, the for­mer cy­cling fed­er­a­tion pres­i­dent who has ex­pe­ri­ence coach­ing young and up­com­ing cy­clists. He guid­ed Ja­maican rid­er Dahlia Palmer to a bronze medal in the keirin event at the Pan Amer­i­can Games in San­ti­a­go, Chile in 2023. The stocky-built Palmer has since won sev­er­al medals in the do­mes­tic com­pe­ti­tions.

Un­der Far­ri­er, the team now trains three times a week at the Na­tion­al Cy­cling Cen­tre (NCC) in Bal­main, Cou­va. Dan­drade de­scribed the team as a very strong one whose mem­bers are ex­pect­ed to mount the podi­um when they com­pete in Pe­ru.

"We have al­ways had strong teams for Ju­nior Pan Am, and they al­ways do well, so I am not ex­pect­ing any­thing less from this team. Nev­er­son, de­spite be­ing a ju­nior, fin­ished sec­ond to sprint ace Kafele Des­ormeaux in near­ly every sprint event of the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed 'Speed Par­adise' and 'Car­ni­val of Speed' events," said Dan­drade.

Nedd shot to fame by shat­ter­ing the ju­nior fly­ing 200-me­tre sprint record at the NCC last year when he pro­duced a time of 10.394 sec­onds to beat back the time of 10.4 that was set by sprint sen­sa­tion Nicholas Paul.

Joined by Ram­roop, Nedd and Williams, the quar­tet have dom­i­nat­ed their re­spec­tive di­vi­sions at the cy­cling fed­er­a­tion's Keep Fit, Na­tion­al Cham­pi­onships, and oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al events, which led to their ex­pect­ed se­lec­tion.

"The TTCF in­tends to ex­pose young cy­clists who do well at the lo­cal events, so what we're see­ing here is the recog­ni­tion of these three rid­ers who have been per­form­ing, and I ex­pect them to fly the flag of T&T with pride in Pe­ru. For this team, the man­ag­er will be Cheryl Lea­cock and Eli­jah Greene will be the me­chan­ic.

Mean­while, the coun­try's Un­der-23 rid­ers will al­so jos­tle for picks on the na­tion­al team for the Youth Pan Amer­i­can Games in Au­gust in Paraguay.

Rid­ers such as Des­ormeaux, Nedd, Dar­nell James and Makaira Wal­lace will fea­ture.

Wal­lace set a new na­tion­al record at the Ju­nior World Cham­pi­onships and hopes to bet­ter her per­for­mance this time. She clocked 10.874 sec­onds in the qual­i­fy­ing round, which was the sec­ond-fastest time among the starters. Wal­lace crushed her pre­vi­ous na­tion­al record of 11.361. She is now the on­ly T&T woman to go un­der the 11-sec­ond bar­ri­er.

Wal­lace then lost in heat two of the 1/8 fi­nal to Ko­re­an cy­clist Yebeen Park. Wal­lace was much faster than Park in the qual­i­fy­ing round as the lat­ter clocked 11.840.