Na­tion­al women's cy­cling ace Te­niel Camp­bell is set to join Aus­tralian team Mitchel­ton-SCOTT for the next two sea­sons.

The 23-year-old T&T rid­er has been tar­get­ed by the club since her move to Eu­rope, the club's gen­er­al man­ag­er Brent Copeland has said since their di­rec­tor Ale­jan­dro Gon­za­les-Tablas point­ed her out to them.

Her top fin­ish­es for this year has been a first-place at the Tour of Thai­land on Stage two, and a run­ner-up po­si­tion at the Pan Amer­i­can Games (Road Race).

A re­lease from Ka­iron Ser­rette yes­ter­day stat­ed: "The 23-year-old burst on­to the Eu­ro­pean cy­cling scene when she was in­vit­ed to join the UCI World Cy­cling Cen­tre (WCC) in 2018. There, un­der the guid­ance of now Mitchel­ton-Scott's Sports Di­rec­tor Ale­jan­dro Gon­za­les-Tablas, it was im­me­di­ate­ly ev­i­dent the sheer num­bers and nat­ur­al abil­i­ty Camp­bell pos­sessed."

Af­ter a two-year de­vel­op­ment pe­ri­od in Switzer­land, the lanky T&T rid­er moved to Italy ear­li­er this year to race un­der Val­car Trav­el & Ser­vice where she im­me­di­ate­ly put her learn­ings to work. A third-place fin­ish at Vuelta CV Fem­i­nas and fifth at Om­loop van Hage­land, got the sea­son off to a fly­ing start be­fore COVID-19 pan­dem­ic brought pro­ceed­ings to a halt.

Camp­bell did not get the type of re­sults she was hop­ing for when the sport re­sumed, and Mitchel­ton-SCOTT has agreed to use the next two years to work close­ly with her and there­by help her gain in­valu­able ex­pe­ri­ence. He be­lieves it will al­so un­lock her abil­i­ty across the world cal­en­dar.

An elat­ed Camp­bell said the club has been her dream team: “Mitchel­ton-SCOTT has been my dream team ever since I was in the World Cy­cling Cen­tre, some days I have to pinch my­self to be­lieve it’s ac­tu­al­ly hap­pen­ing. To be giv­en this op­por­tu­ni­ty here to con­tin­ue grow­ing and to give them the chance to help me grow and de­vel­op is re­al­ly ex­cit­ing be­cause they have a lot of top-end rid­ers, they have been here for some time now and you can pro­gres­sive­ly see how strong they are, how they de­vel­op a lot and how well they work to­geth­er as a unit."

The lo­cal T&T rid­er who is the first women's cy­clist to qual­i­fy for the Olympic Games for T&T, not­ed: “I nev­er thought I would get to this point so quick­ly. To be per­form­ing so well amongst the best in Eu­rope was re­al­ly a shock to every­one be­cause they wouldn’t ex­pect me to fit in so quick­ly and al­ready be a force to reck­on with on the cir­cuit. There’s still so much to dis­cov­er about my­self be­cause I am so young and there’s so much to learn and im­prove on, so you nev­er re­al­ly know what type of rid­er I am."

“I just want to gain so much ex­pe­ri­ence and knowl­edge be­cause you can have all of the pow­er in the world but if you don’t have the ex­pe­ri­ence, that team around you to re­al­ly push you and help you grow, I don’t think the re­sults will come.”

Ac­cord­ing to Copeland: "Te­niel went through the ex­cel­lent school­ing of the UCI World Cy­cling Cen­tre and we be­lieve she has an enor­mous amount of tal­ent. To­geth­er with our team’s pro­fes­sion­al struc­ture and ex­pe­ri­ence, we will do our ut­most to take the mar­gin of im­prove­ment we feel Te­niel has to the high­est of lev­els."

“Te­niel is a per­son who has made huge sac­ri­fices to get to where she is and we will be giv­ing her the sup­port she de­serves to make sure all her sac­ri­fices have all been very much worth­while. We al­so thank team own­er Ger­ry Ryan who is al­ways a big sup­port­er of Aus­tralian tal­ent but at the same time is en­cour­ag­ing us to keep the team as in­ter­na­tion­al as pos­si­ble. Te­niel fits in very well with this phi­los­o­phy, we wel­come Te­niel to the team and we are very much look­ing for­ward to see­ing her in our team colours.”