"Paul, Paul, Paul" rang out loud­ly when the cur­tains came down on the UCI-ap­proved Class 1 ‘Speed Par­adise’ and ‘Car­ni­val of Speed’ DPS-or­gan­ised events, which were de­signed to af­ford UCI points to­ward the World Cham­pi­onships lat­er this year in Chile.

T&T sprint ace Nicholas Paul mount­ed the podi­um for the sec­ond time in the Car­ni­val of Speed event on Sat­ur­day (June 21) when he won the match sprint.

In Sep­tem­ber 2021, Paul par­tic­i­pat­ed in the UCI Track Na­tions Cy­cling Cup and came away with triple Golds in the Ki­lo Time Tri­al, Keirin and Sprints. Then, in Oc­to­ber of that year, Paul earned a sil­ver in the Ki­lo Time Tri­al at the UCI World Cham­pi­onships.

On Sat­ur­day, the form that led to those ac­com­plish­ments was ev­i­dent. Paul, who once held the record as the fastest man in the sprints fol­low­ing his 9.100-sec­ond per­for­mance at the Elite Pan Amer­i­can Track Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships in Cochabam­ba, Bo­livia in 2019, re­turned to the tracks to beat Great Britain’s Mar­cus Hi­ley for the gold medal in the match sprint fi­nal.

The two clashed on Thurs­day (June 19) in the fi­nal of the sprint in the Speed Par­adise event, which Paul won eas­i­ly for his first gold medal of the week­end. But fol­low­ing his tri­umph in the keirin fi­nal of the Car­ni­val of Speed on Fri­day (June 20) for gold medal num­ber two, Paul, who rep­re­sent­ed both his lo­cal club Cen­tral Spokes Cy­cle Club and his coun­try, held off the Briton for his third gold medal. His coun­try­man Kwe­si Browne se­cured the bronze medal by plac­ing third in the match sprint.

Great Britain’s Iona Moir al­so se­cured her third gold medal of the com­pe­ti­tion when she de­feat­ed her com­pa­tri­ot Geor­gette Rand for the women’s keirin ti­tle. Lu­na Al­varez of Colom­bia took the bronze medal with her third-place fin­ish.

Mean­while, Dafele Des­ormeaux, the ris­ing T&T sprint tal­ent, claimed the ju­nior men’s na­tion­al sprint ti­tle when he held off Ju­dah Nev­er­son for a third time in three days. Des­ormeaux of the team DPS had pre­vi­ous­ly beat­en Nev­er­son of JLD Cy­cling Acad­e­my for the keirin crown. The two are set to re­new their ri­val­ry in the do­mes­tic com­pe­ti­tions.

T&T’s Alexi Ramirez clinched the bronze medal in the women’s elim­i­na­tion race, rid­ing for the Gold­en State Blaz­ers. Ramirez showed good en­durance and speed to fin­ish be­hind the even­tu­al win­ner, Lu­ciana Os­o­rio Be­tan­cur of Colom­bia, and Scar­let Cortes Ugarte of Chile, se­cur­ing the sec­ond po­si­tion.

In the men’s elim­i­na­tion race, Ja­di­an Neaves fin­ished just out­side of the medals in fourth po­si­tion af­ter the top three spots were sewn up by Clever Mar­tinez (Venezuela), Gus­tav Jo­hans­son (Swe­den) and Ja­cob De­car (Chile), tak­ing first, sec­ond and third, re­spec­tive­ly.

Neaves made amends in the elite men’s 40-lap scratch race where he crossed the fin­ish line in third, rep­re­sent­ing Raiders Cy­cle and Mul­ti­sport Club. That event was won by Mar­tinez with Cal­lum Moir of Great Britain seal­ing the run­ner-up spot.