The pair of Nicholas Paul and Te­niel Camp­bell will spear­head T&T’s cy­cling teams ahead of the UCI World Track and Road Race Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships for road rid­ers and track rid­ers at the end of this month.

The 2025 Road World Cham­pi­onships will take place in Rwan­da and will be the first ever held in Africa and one of the hard­est races in rain­bow jer­sey his­to­ry, with the elite men climb­ing 5,475 me­tres of el­e­va­tion dur­ing their 267.5 km race.

The race routes were of­fi­cial­ly un­veiled in Zürich on Thurs­day and will be held in the Rwan­dan cap­i­tal of Ki­gali be­tween Sep­tem­ber 21 and 28, 2025. Rwan­da is known as the ‘Land of a Thou­sand Hills’, and Ki­gali sits at an al­ti­tude of 1850 me­tres, adding a fur­ther dif­fi­cul­ty to the rac­ing. Apart from Camp­bell, who is no stranger to hilly and high-al­ti­tude con­di­tions, the T&T team is al­so ex­pect­ed to in­clude Ja­di­an Neaves, the win­ner of this year’s first TT Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion’s (TTCF) Road Race Chal­lenge elite men open, which took place from the Fore­shore in Mu­cu­rapo to Cou­va and back on Jan­u­ary 19.

Neaves is a dou­ble-bronze medal­list at last year’s Pan Am Cham­pi­onships, who topped a field of 21 cy­clists ear­li­er this year.

Ear­li­er this year, Camp­bell pro­duced a gut­sy per­for­mance for the gold medal at the Pan Amer­i­can Track Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships. Her per­for­mances at the track event al­so earned her qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the World Track Cham­pi­onships in Chile — a ma­jor goal for the back end of the sea­son. Yes­ter­day, Chair­man of the Rac­ing Com­mit­tee, Gre­go­ry Dan­drade, said the size of the team for the World Cham­pi­onships will be de­ter­mined by the quo­ta giv­en to them by the sport’s world gov­ern­ing body, the UCI, soon.

The quo­ta will com­prise the qual­i­fy­ing stan­dards, which will de­ter­mine the num­ber of rid­ers qual­i­fy­ing for the event. Ac­cord­ing to Dan­drade, the cy­cling fed­er­a­tion is ex­pect­ed to re­ceive the quo­ta by this week.

T&T’s sprint ace, Paul, has al­so earned a qual­i­fy­ing berth for the World Cham­pi­onships based on his per­for­mances in pre­vi­ous events. He could po­ten­tial­ly be joined by for­mer Olympian Njisane Phillip and Kwe­si Browne, among oth­ers, for the track part of the cham­pi­onships, while the en­durance part could be rep­re­sent­ed by Ak­il Camp­bell, etc.

Dan­drade said the coun­try’s sprint team has usu­al­ly done well in the past, but there’s a need for im­prove­ment by the en­durance rid­ers.