The like­li­hood of T&T's Nicholas Paul and Njisane Phillip meet­ing in to­day's fi­nal of the men's sprint event got even greater when both cy­clists pro­gressed from the quar­ter­fi­nal round on Fri­day night at the Pan Amer­i­can Games in Li­ma, Pe­ru.

Last evening, Paul and Phillip swept their re­spec­tive quar­ter­fi­nal races to book their places in the semi­fi­nals with hopes of reach­ing the best of three fi­nal card­ed for Sat­ur­day night.

Paul eas­i­ly won races one and two against Brazil's Ka­cio Fon­se­ca Da Sil­va in heat one while Phillip did the same in heat two ver­sus Colom­bian San­ti­a­go Ramirez Morales.

In their re­spec­tive fi­nal four ride off, Phillip will be chal­lenged by Venezue­lan Her­sony Canelon, who al­so swept his quar­ter­fi­nal race against Le­an­dro Bot­tas­so and Paul will face off against Kevin Quin­tero of Colom­bia. The lat­ter won two straight races against Jair Tjon En Fa of Suri­name to ad­vance.

For Sat­ur­day's, race one in the best-in-three semi­fi­nals will ride off at 1.15 pm (T&T time) and then race two at 1.56 pm. If the re­spec­tive races reach a de­cider, it will be raced at 2.37 pm.

Ear­li­er on Fri­day, Paul was phe­nom­e­nal in the first stage of qual­i­fi­ca­tion of the men's sprint event in the Velo­drome at the Na­tion­al Sports Vil­lage in Li­ma.

He clocked 9.808 sec­onds in the men's 200m fly­ing start and broke the meet record of 9.977 pre­vi­ous­ly held by his cur­rent team­mate Njisane Phillip which he achieved at 2011 edi­tion of the Games in Guadala­jara, Mex­i­co.

Paul pro­gressed with the best time of the fastest 12 rid­ers who qual­i­fied to 1/8 fi­nal.

So too, Phillip with the sec­ond-fastest time of 10.087.

Mo­ments lat­er, Paul and Phillip's tac­tics again worked su­perbly to have both T&T rid­ers progress to the quar­ter­fi­nal.

Paul was up first in the 1/8 Fi­nal and was chal­lenged by Cana­di­an Joel Ar­cham­bault in heat one but the lo­cal cy­clist was un­touch­able and ad­vanced to the next round while his op­po­nent went to the repechage.

Phillip al­so sent his chal­lenger Ce­sar Mar­cano Sanchez of Venezuela to the repechage af­ter win­ning heat two.

Both Paul and Phillip are seek­ing their sec­ond gold medal af­ter part­ner­ing with Keron Bram­ble to reach the top of the podi­um in the men's team sprint on Thurs­day evening.

Late Thurs­day night, T&T's Ak­il Camp­bell was a sev­enth-place fin­ish­er in the men's om­ni­um, af­ter tal­ly­ing 98 points from his four events.

Head­ing in­to his fi­nal race of the event, the points race, Camp­bell was on 78 points and crossed in sev­enth place to earn 20 points to add to his over­all score.

Ear­li­er, he nabbed 24 points in the scratch race fol­low­ing his ninth-place fin­ish, then earned 30 points for plac­ing sixth in the tem­po race, to move up one spot in­to eighth be­fore drop­ping back down ninth af­ter he was the fifth rid­er to be oust­ed in the elim­i­na­tion race and had to set­tle for ninth place to seal 24 points ahead of the fi­nal race.

In shoot­ing

At the Las Pal­mas Range, nei­ther T&T shoot­ers, Robert Auer­bach Jr and Mar­sha Bullen-Jones, had great starts in their re­spec­tive events.

On day one of the Men's Skeet qual­i­fi­ca­tion round, Auer­bach Jr sits in 21st po­si­tion of the 28 ath­letes with 44 points with rounds of 23 and 21, re­spec­tive­ly.

Bullen-Jones will have her work cut out for her to­day af­ter a poor start in the qual­i­fi­ca­tion round of the women's 25m rapid fire pis­tol.

In pre­ci­sion shoot­ing, she pro­duced 266 points af­ter rounds of 89, 92 and 85 to be in a sec­ond-to-last spot in the event which has 27 shoot­ers are par­tic­i­pat­ing.

For her to as­cend from the 26th spot, she will have to be per­fect in to­day's rapid cat­e­go­ry in the sec­ond stage in the qual­i­fy­ing phase.

Sat­ur­day's T&T sched­ule

Hock­ey

Men's Pool A - T&T vs Chile, 11 am

Shoot­ing

Women's 25m Air Pis­tol Rapid Fire 2nd Stage - Mar­sha Bullen-Jones, 10 am

Men's Skeet 2nd Stage - Robert Auer­bach Jr, 10.30 am

Cy­cling

Women's Sprint qual­i­fy­ing - Alexi Cos­ta, 12.05 pm

Men's Sprint

Semi­fi­nals - Nicholas Paul, Njisane Phillip, 1.11 pm

Sail­ing

Women's Laser Ra­di­al Open­ing Se­ries 1 - Kel­ly-Ann Ar­rindell, 1 pm

Men' Laser Stan­dard - An­drew Lewis, 1 pm

Source

#TeamTTO #10golds24 Cycling Njisane Phillip Nicholas Paul 2019 Pan Am Games, Lima, Peru