WAL­TER AL­IBEY

wal­ter.al­ibey@guardian.co.tt

Tal­ent­ed younger sprint­ers Zion Puli­do and Sylese Chris­t­ian will join the T&T cy­cling team ahead of the Elite Pan Amer­i­can Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil be­tween Ju­ly 14-17.

Rowe­na Williams pres­i­dent of the T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion re­vealed this yes­ter­day, say­ing they will be the on­ly ad­di­tion to the team cur­rent­ly at the Com­mon­wealth Games in Birm­ing­ham, Eng­land.

Puli­do, con­sid­ered one of the coun­try’s fastest up­com­ing sprint­ers, will join the likes of Nicholas Paul, Kwe­si Browne and Quin­cy Alexan­der to form a for­mi­da­ble quar­tet for the team sprint.

Last year the team of Puli­do, Njisane Phillip and Keron Bram­ble claimed sil­ver in the Men’s Team Sprint of the Elite Pan Amer­i­can Track Cham­pi­onships in Li­ma, Pe­ru. And in 2019 the T&T sprint team of Bram­ble, Phillip and Paul won the gold medal.

The on­ly re­al con­cern for the na­tion­al coach at the cham­pi­onships will be the or­der and strat­e­gy to gain max­i­mum pro­duc­tiv­i­ty from the rid­ers.

Paul has been in top shape, fol­low­ing his gold, sil­ver and bronze medals won at the Com­mon­wealth Games in the keirin, match-sprint and kilo­me­tre time tri­al re­spec­tive­ly.

Browne has been liv­ing in Paul’s shad­ows, fin­ish­ing sixth in the fi­nal of the keirin.

Mean­while, Williams was high in praise of Paul, say­ing she was not sur­prised by the achieve­ment of the young rid­er who has been work­ing hard at his base at the UCI Cy­cle Cen­tre in Aigle, Switzer­land.

“We’re very proud of him, proud of his achieve­ments. We were ex­pect­ing great achieve­ments com­ing out of Cali, Colom­bia, the gold medal he would have won in Cali and the prepa­ra­tions he would have been un­der, go­ing in­to the Com­mon­wealth Games, be­cause this would have been one of his goals for this year.

I think he ex­e­cut­ed well and he put all his ef­forts in­to mak­ing T&T proud and I think that is com­mend­able at a time when we re­al­ly need to have some pos­i­tives in the sport­ing are­na,” Williams told Guardian Me­dia Sports yes­ter­day.

“We def­i­nite­ly con­grat­u­late the en­tire team, and though no oth­er medals were won, I think the en­tire team would have per­formed to their best and they would have seen where ad­di­tion­al work would be need­ed and their coach­es would def­i­nite­ly be putting dif­fer­ent strate­gies in place to move for­ward.”