By WALTER ALIBEY Thursday, October 22 2009

A TRINIDAD and Tobago cycling team, led by twin-captains Colin Wilson and Adam Alexander, wants to follow in the successes of the current Trinidad and Tobago cricket team, when they compete at the Caribbean Cycling Championship Road Race in neighbouring Barbados at the weekend.

At a press conference at the Rituals Café on Maraval Road on Monday evening, team manager Ed Watson insists he wants the cyclists, who are all from different clubs, to perform like a team.

The Trinidad and Tobago cricketers cruised into the semi-final of the Airtel Twenty/20 Champions League in India and appear to be the favourites to take home the title.

Trinidad and Tobago cyclists have not won the regional championship since 2003 and Watson is promising a performance that could lead to victory. He is calling for the same intensity that the TT cricketers are displaying in India. The team consists of Wilson, the 2009 Time Trial champion, Adam Alexander, this year’s Road Race winner, Gevan Samuel, Glen Whiby, silver medallist at the Time Trial, and Joshua Alexander, who only recently returned from the United States from a successful stint.

Watson said cycling is much more challenging than it was a decade ago, but offered that local cyclists have been doing well. “Cyclists in Trinidad and Tobago have been working hard, training for long hours and competing weekly and are therefore, in a better position than they were in, years ago,” he said.

He assured the media that the selection of Wilson, the Alexander boys, Whiby and Samuel was not by chance, saying they have been working really hard. Wilson is already assured of copping the “Cyclist of the Year” award at the annual prize giving ceremony to be held later this year, having won two of the three major events this year. He won the Criterium and the Time Trial events before he was beaten on his way to a hat-trick of victories in the Road Race in early October.

The lanky Wilson will carry the burden of winning medals along with his team at the UCI-sanctioned championship which will also feature regional powerhouses Guadeloupe, Puerto Rico, Santo Domingo and Martinique. Wilson and Whiby will begin TT’s quest for regional supremacy on Saturday in the Time Trials before the entire team contest the Road Race on Sunday.

Watson said the TT cyclists intend to be driven by the same unity that earned the TT cricketers a semi-final berth at the Twenty/20 Championship League and will attempt to break a winless streak which spans back to 2003 when Guyana-born Stephen Mangroo won.

The cyclists all received their uniforms for the event and were also given documents with the code of conduct.