Men’s sprint cham­pi­on Nicholas Paul picked up his sec­ond medal and T&T’s third at the Pan Amer­i­can Games in San­ti­a­go, Chile on Fri­day. The T&T cy­clist copped a sil­ver medal in the keirin fi­nal at the Velo­drome in Pe­nalolen Park.

When the rid­ers left their start­ing blocks and set­tled in­to po­si­tion, Paul was be­hind the pace-mo­tor­cy­cle lead­ing the line of six rid­ers strung out in sin­gle file dur­ing the ini­tial laps. As the pace of the race in­creased so did Suri­name’s Jair Tjon En Fa, who made his move, and the rest of the field re­spond­ed which saw Paul drop to the back of the six-field pack.

By the next lap, the T&T cy­clist moved to mid-pack while Colom­bian Kevin Quin­tero, the men’s sprint bronze medal­list, and race favourite, hit the front with one lap re­main­ing.

In that fi­nal lap, Paul had moved in­to sec­ond place but the Colom­bian man­aged to hold off his chal­lenge to score the win and his sec­ond medal as well. The T&T rid­er stayed on for sec­ond fol­lowed by Mex­i­can Juan Car­los Ruiz in third place.

Fill­ing the re­main­ing spots were James Hedg­cock of Cana­da, Tjon En Fa, men’s sprint sil­ver medal­list, and Brazil­ian Joao Vi­tor Da Sil­va, re­spec­tive­ly.

Paul’s en­try in­to the fi­nal was tac­ti­cal as he did not ex­ert much en­er­gy, book­ing a spot as the third-best rid­er from heat two which in­volved a bit of dra­ma.

Chris­t­ian Or­te­ga of Colom­bia was dis­qual­i­fied, re­duc­ing the num­ber of rid­ers to five in the sec­ond and fi­nal heat which was restart­ed mo­ments af­ter its re­call. It was learned that the Colom­bian rid­er stayed too far away from the mo­tor­cy­cle dur­ing the ini­tial laps of the keirin. The rules in­di­cate that he has a cer­tain time­frame to get be­hind the mo­tor­cy­cle and can­not stay more than ten me­tres away from the bike while it is on the track lead­ing the bunch dur­ing the race. He con­tra­vened the rules and thus was dis­qual­i­fied.

The sec­ond try went off with­out a hitch and Paul pro­gressed as the third-best rid­er in the heat which was won by Da Sil­va. The Brazil­ian made a cheeky move in the fi­nal lap to speed past the all-rid­ers from the out­side while the oth­er’s fo­cus was on the men’s sprint gold medal­list on the in­side. The oth­er fi­nal­ist emerg­ing from the heat was Tjon En Fa.

On Thurs­day, Paul swept the best of three-ride fi­nal against Tjon En Fa to reach the top of the podi­um, to re­peat as the Pan Am cham­pi­on.

T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) pres­i­dent Di­ane Hen­der­son was thrilled by the achieve­ment of T&T’s first gold medal­list at the 19th edi­tion of the Pan Am Games.

“We are ex­treme­ly proud and ec­sta­t­ic about Nicholas Paul achiev­ing the re­peat Sprint Gold here at the Pan Am Games San­ti­a­go 2023. His races were well ex­e­cut­ed and con­tin­ue to show his fo­cus and ded­i­ca­tion to­wards a spe­cif­ic goal,” said the TTOC head who al­so recog­nised the ef­forts of the en­tire cy­cling team.

Both Kwe­si Browne and Ak­il Camp­bell had spills dur­ing their re­spec­tive events be­fore Fri­day’s pro­gramme.

Hen­der­son said, “Alexi Cos­ta is to be con­grat­u­lat­ed on her mag­nif­i­cent ef­fort in the Om­ni­um and fi­nal points race where she fin­ished fourth over­all and urged her to keep work­ing to­wards her goals.”

T&T’s now has medals in each colour. On Mon­day, the men’s 3x3 bas­ket­ball team of Ah­keel Boyd, twin broth­er Ah­keem, Mori­ba De Fre­itas and Chike Au­gus­tine won bronze.

Brazil edges T&T

stick­men 2-1

Two ear­ly goals from Brazil hand­ed T&T hock­ey men their sec­ond loss in as many match­es on a cold morn­ing at San­ti­a­go.

The lo­cal “Stick­men” coached by Dar­ren Cowie will rue their many missed chances as they went un­der to the Brazil­ians 2-1 at the Hock­ey Cen­tre at the main Pan Am venue.

Brazil scored a cou­ple of goals with­in six min­utes through strikes from An­dre Pa­trochi­no and Stephane Smith in a match.

“It’s been some­thing we have been try­ing to talk about as well a cou­ple of times since in CAC, along­side the dis­ci­pline and struc­ture, we usu­al­ly give away ear­ly goals a lot from the Cu­ba game, Mex­i­co fi­nal, and es­pe­cial­ly af­ter dom­i­nat­ing pos­ses­sion, dom­i­nat­ing the game we give away that ear­ly goal and it kind of puts us in a drawl to get in­to ac­tion and by that time, I say it’s a lit­tle too late we lose mo­men­tum, we lose fo­cus and lose the dis­ci­pline of it all,” said Cowie af­ter the match.

Pa­trochi­no need­ed just two min­utes af­ter the whis­tle blew to find his team’s first goal and four min­utes lat­er, Smith scored an­oth­er field goal, the even­tu­al win­ner past goal­keep­er An­tho­ny Rocke.

The game’s pace in­creased in that open­ing quar­ter as the T&T men be­gan at­tack­ing deep­er in­to Brazil’s de­fen­sive zone. The lo­cal team earned two penal­ty cor­ners there­after, the first was saved by goal­keep­er Ro­dri­go Fausti­no and the oth­er went wide. The Brazil­ian’s back­line held strong though, con­tin­u­ing to re­pel the ball and sweep it away with the de­fend­ers’ sticks low to the ground as the first quar­ter closed.

The score stayed un­changed in the next ses­sion with Brazil hold­ing the two-goal ad­van­tage.

Af­ter a bar­ren sec­ond quar­ter, T&T fi­nal­ly broke through Brazil’s back­line in the 33rd minute. The Brazil­ians crowd­ed the goal as it set up to de­fend a penal­ty cor­ner but Pierre’s shot from the out­side found the back of the net to re­duce his team’s deficit to one (2-1) in the third quar­ter. The goal trig­gered the DJ to play Machel Mon­tano’s and De­stra’s 2023 hit song Shake The Place, to the de­light of the crowd and cer­tain­ly the T&T’s sup­port­ers.

How­ev­er, it failed to ig­nite the lo­cal team as sev­er­al of their penal­ty cor­ners, eight in to­tal com­pared to Brazil’s two, and twice back-to-back, were wast­ed due to poor in­jec­tion or saved by ei­ther goal­keep­er Fausti­no or his team­mates.

“It’s re­al­ly dif­fi­cult to kind of break, that kind of re­laxed cul­ture try­ing to bring it in­to warm-up to try and in­crease the in­ten­si­ty, try to change up the struc­ture a lit­tle bit and the tac­tics as well to prob­a­bly start with press­ing to get the en­er­gy go­ing so like there is al­ways that first two min­utes that we are not ful­ly there, ful­ly fo­cused. I’m hop­ing we can work on it and im­prove it,” said Cowie.

No goals were scored by ei­ther side in the re­main­ing third quar­ter or fourth pe­ri­od as T&T slumped to their sec­ond straight loss, hav­ing been beat­en by USA 6-1, two days be­fore and will now face Cana­da in their fi­nal group stage match on Sun­day at 8.30 am (T&T time).

“Cana­da has the best team in the group, sec­ond best team that is here. It’s al­most like a big con­tra­dic­tion based on the oth­er teams we have played, USA and Brazil, does play with some struc­ture but Cana­da is the ‘struc­ture kings’. They are the king of struc­ture in this re­gion and they don’t break struc­ture.

“It’s not go­ing to be easy to break them down with in­di­vid­ual play and they’re go­ing to be re­al pa­tient with the ball and keep pos­ses­sion and try to play slow­er to en­sure gaps are there. They will recog­nise those gaps and take full ad­van­tage so that’s a big chal­lenge now to see how much we have de­vel­oped in be­ing dis­ci­plined and stay­ing struc­tured for long pe­ri­ods of stick­ing to the game plan, and move on from there,” said Cowie.

In yes­ter­day’s sec­ond group A match, the Cana­di­ans edged the USA 2-1.

To­day, the hock­ey women will try to come back from their open­ing 15-0 loss to the Unit­ed States, look­ing to be more dis­ci­plined against Uruguay in their sec­ond match of group A at San­ti­a­go 2023.

Coach Akim Tou­s­saint, fol­low­ing the heavy open­ing loss, called on his play­ers to work on their struc­ture, get more ef­fi­cient de­fen­sive­ly, and im­prove on every as­pect of their game as they seek de­vel­op­ment in the com­pe­ti­tion against high­er-ranked com­peti­tors.

The T&T “Stick­women” meet the Uruguayans at 8.30 a.m. (T&T time). They, too, are seek­ing to re­bound from a huge 8-0 open­ing loss to Ar­genti­na.