T&T’s Nicholas Paul re­tained his Men’s Match Sprint ti­tle at the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean Games when he out­classed fel­low T&T cy­clist Kwe­si Browne in the fi­nal at the Na­tion­al Velo­drome n San­to Domin­go, El Sal­vador, on Fri­day night.

The 24-year-old, the fly­ing 200m world record hold­er with a time of 9.100 sec­onds car­ried his gold medal haul at two edi­tions of the CAC Games to four with the win, while Browne, 29, claimed his sec­ond in­di­vid­ual medal at the games, hav­ing cap­tured bronze in the Keirin in 2018 in Bar­ran­quil­la, Colom­bia, and fourth medal over­all hav­ing won gold in the Team Sprint five years ago, with Paul and Njisane Phillip, but bronze this time around with Paul and young­ster Zion Puli­do.

The two medals car­ried T&T’s over­all haul so far to 11, in­clu­sive of the four gold medals, three sil­ver, and four bronze medals.

Swim­mer Dy­lan Carter won T&T’s three oth­er gold medals and al­so won a sil­ver, and a bronze as part of the men’s 4x100m freestyle re­lay team with Nikoli Black­man, Gra­ham Cha­toor, and Zarek Wil­son.

Black­man al­so won sil­ver, while Cherelle Thomp­son added a bronze, and box­er Nigel Paul, T&T’s oth­er medal.

Yes­ter­day at the Cy­cling Velo­drome, in the Match Sprint semi­fi­nals, Paul de­feat­ed Colom­bia Quin­tero in two straight rides of the best-of-three while Browne did like­wise against Mex­i­co’s Edgar Ver­dugo, to set up the first-ever all-T&T Match Sprint fi­nal at an in­ter­na­tion­al event.

When the event be­gan on Thurs­day morn­ing with the qual­i­fi­ca­tion round among the 14 en­trants, world record hold­er Paul, and coun­try Browne were the fastest qual­i­fiers with times of 9.976 sec­onds, and 10.216 sec­onds re­spec­tive­ly while Mex­i­co’s Juan Ruiz was third fastest, in 10.239, fol­lowed by Quin­tero (10.323), Cris­t­ian Or­te­ga (10.330), and Ver­dugo Or­te­ga (10.467) as the six top qual­i­fiers.

In the round-of-16 which com­prised of one ride off, Paul de­feat­ed Hon­duran Xavier Se­gu­ra, who was 12th fastest in the heats in 11.158, while Browne out­classed Cos­ta Ri­ca, Nayid Le­an­dro who clocked 11.149 in the morn­ing ses­sion for 11th spot in the first two heats.

Ruiz won from El Sal­vadore­an Wilber Mar­tinez in heat three, Quin­tero out­paced Ja­maican Daniel Plamer in heat four, Or­te­ga raced past Cuban Da­iron Or­te­ga, and Ver­dugo pressed home ahead of Cuban Yansel Arias.

In the quar­ter­fi­nals, Paul made light work of one of two qual­i­fiers from the repechage, Arias, while Browne took on the oth­er repechage qual­i­fi­er Da­iron Or­te­ga.

And in the two oth­er qual­i­fiers, Ver­dugo stunned his much-fan­cied coun­try­man Di­az, and Quin­tero de­feat­ed Cris­t­ian Or­te­ga in an all-Colom­bian du­el to se­cure their places in the semi­fi­nals, with the fi­nals set for 8.30 pm tonight.

T&T Adri­an­na Sey­ja­gat top the Keirin sev­enth to 12th play­offs ahead of Venezue­lan Ja­ly­mar Ro­driguez and Cuban San­dra Cabr­era while T&T’s Phoebe Sandy was fourth, and Thalia Di­az of Cu­ba, was fifth.

This, af­ter Sey­ja­gat and Sandy both end­ed in the fourth spot in the re­spec­tive semi­fi­nal, heats on Thurs­day.

Com­pet­ing in heat one, Sey­ja­gat end­ed fourth be­hind the trio of, Colom­bian Martha Bay­ona, Mex­i­co’s Yuli Ver­dugo, and Suri­name’s Tachana Dal­ger while Sandy suf­fered the same out­come in heat two with Mex­i­co’s Daniela Gax­i­o­la, Colom­bian Va­le­ria Cor­do­zo, and Cos­ta Ri­can, Abi­gail Re­cio all fin­ish ahead of the T&T cy­clist.

Al­so Fri­day, T&T’s Alexi Cos­ta-Ramirez con­test­ed the Women’s Om­ni­um and was sev­enth in the Scratch Race, sixth in the Tem­po Race, and fifth in the Elim­i­na­tion Race.

On Sat­ur­day, Paul and Browne will com­pete in the Keirin qual­i­fy­ing heats at 1.32 pm while Sandy and Sey­ja­gat line up in the Women’s Sprint qual­i­fy­ing heats at 1.05 pm, and Tariq Woods in the Men’s Om­ni­um from 1.24 pm, and in wa­ter po­lo, the T&T men go in­to ac­tion against Mex­i­co from 6.30 pm in Pool A af­ter Ba­hamas and CCS meet in the open­er from 5 pm.

Cu­ba stings Ca­lyp­so Stick­men 6-3

T&T se­nior men’s hock­ey team fell to a stun­ning 6-3 loss to Cu­ba in their sec­ond match in Pool A at the Field Hock­ey Pavil­lion, in Par­que del Este in San­to Domin­go, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Fri­day.

Com­ing off 4-1 wins over Guyana, and Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic re­spec­tive­ly, T&T and Cu­ba both went in­to their en­counter brim­ming with con­fi­dence.

How­ev­er, it was the Cubans who stormed in­to a 4-0 lead at the end of the first 15-minute quar­ter, with Mar­cos Mar­tinez, scor­ing in the sec­ond minute, fol­lowed by goals from Iraidys Calderon in the eighth, Car­los Con­sue­gra, in the 13th and Calderon with his sec­ond of the match in the 15th.

In the sec­ond quar­ter, Dy­lan Fran­cis pulled a goal back for T&T, but Li­odis­bel Cer­vante scored again for Cu­ba to re­store the four-goal cush­ion in the 26th.

Calderon then com­plet­ed his hat trick in the 45th minute be­fore Tariq Mar­cano added a sec­ond for T&T in the 59th, and a minute lat­er, Teague Mar­cano, scor­er of a hat trick in the win over Guyana, added a third on the stroke of full-time.

On Sun­day, the T&T men close out round-robin play against Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic from noon with the sec­ond spot in the pool on the line af­ter the lat­ter edged Guyana 3-2 yes­ter­day while Cu­ba faces Guyana from 4 pm.

In Pool A, Bar­ba­dos pipped Mex­i­co 1-0 for its sec­ond win in as many match­es, and Ja­maica blanked El Sal­vador, 3-0.

To­day, the T&T women will seek to avenge the men’s loss when they face Cu­ba women from 2 pm, in their fi­nal round-robin match in Pool A.

As it stands, the Cubans lead the four-team group with four points, the same as Mex­i­co, while T&T has three points, and Ja­maica bot­tom of the pool with­out a point.

In Pool B, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic has a max­i­mum of six points, two ahead of Bar­ba­dos ahead of their clash from noon to­day for the top spot while Puer­to Ri­co and Bermu­da, with one and ze­ro points re­spec­tive­ly clash from 4 pm.

At the end of the round-robin stage in each pool, the top two teams in each group of the men's and women's com­pe­ti­tions ad­vance to the semi­fi­nals, while the third and fourth-placed teams com­pete in the fifth to eighth semi­fi­nals.

Guatemala hands Ca­lyp­so Spik­ers third straight loss

T&T se­nior men’s vol­ley­ball team suf­fered a third straight de­feat when they went un­der in four sets to Guatemala (com­pet­ing un­der the Cen­tro Caribe Sports due to the IOC’s sus­pen­sion of its Olympic Com­mit­tee) at the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean Games Fri­day.

Play­ing at the Car­los El Famoso Her­nan­dez Sports Palace in San Sal­vador, CCS (Guatemala) earned their sec­ond vic­to­ry of the tour­na­ment 25-23, 25-27, 25-19, 25-21 while T&T end­ed with a round-robin record of -3 and will meet Mex­i­co, third-placed fin­ish­ers in Pool A in one of two fifth to eighth semi­fi­nals while Suri­name comes up against Guatemala in the oth­er.

Both T&T and CCS bat­tled strong­ly but set two was the most com­pet­i­tive one with CCS press­ing in the clos­ing points which T&T dom­i­nat­ed but missed three set points be­fore their 27-25 set win.

The rep­re­sen­ta­tives of CCS fin­ished with a huge 72-54 ad­van­tage in at­tack­ing points. They al­so led 5-4 in blocks and 2-1 in aces. T&T hand­ed out 21 points from un­forced er­rors and Guatemala to­talised 31.

Team cap­tain and out­side hit­ter Car­los López was the most pro­duc­tive play­er in the match, with 24 points for CCS on 22 kills, two blocks and one ace. Mid­dle block­er Bran­don Chin­chilla joined in scor­ing 12 points on 9 kills, two blocks and one ace. Out­side hit­ter, Wag­n­er Cha­con, who came off the bench in the third set, con­tributed with 11 kill points.

Out­side hit­ter, Daynte Stew­art fin­ished with 23 points (21 kills, two blocks) as T&T’s top scor­er while Mikheil Hoyte added 12 points (11 kills, one block in the loss.

In Group A match, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic swept past Suri­name 25-12, 25-16, 25-21 while Cu­ba faced Mex­i­co, and Puer­to Ri­co met El Sal­vador in the late match­es with au­to­mat­ic semi­fi­nal places at stake.

3x3 Bas­ket­ball men reach quar­ter­fi­nals

T&T men's team of Chike Au­gus­tine, Ah­keem Boyd, Tyrese Fields and Nathy­on Lewis de­feat­ed St Lu­cia, 20-17, Fri­day night to reach the quar­ter­fi­nals in the 3x3 bas­ket­ball com­pe­ti­tion.

The St Lu­cians were al­so beat­en by Venezuela ear­li­er, 21-10, and will fin­ish at the bot­tom of the three-team Group C to be elim­i­nat­ed from the com­pe­ti­tion.

On Sat­ur­day, the lo­cal team will face the Venezue­lans at 4 pm to bat­tle for the top spot in Group C. The top two teams ad­vance to the quar­ter­fi­nal round.