The Pan Amer­i­can Games closed on Sun­day but T&T is still cel­e­brat­ing its his­toric per­for­mance, claim­ing 13 medals, the most ever.

T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) Bri­an Lewis was pleased with the achieve­ment and is al­ready look­ing ahead to next year's Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan.

"I am very proud of Team TTO said Lewis told Guardain Me­dia Sports on Mon­day. "But cog­nisant that there is no room for com­pla­cen­cy."

T&T slipped in the medal stand­ings com­pared to 2015 Toron­to Games in Cana­da, falling two spots to 17th in the over­all race with 13 medals (two gold, eight sil­ver, three bronze). Al­though be­ing up in the to­tal num­ber went down in the gold stand­ings from four years ago. In Toron­to, T&T won eight medals - three gold, three sil­ver and two bronze.

Lewis de­scribed the per­for­mance as "en­cour­ag­ing" say­ing: "To ex­ceed our pre­vi­ous best is al­ways an ob­jec­tive.

"In the con­text of Tokyo2020, it's en­cour­ag­ing as it gives us a clear line of sight of what is need­ed."

The lo­cal cy­cling team was cer­tain­ly en­cour­ag­ing in­deed as they were re­spon­si­ble for five of the 13 medals col­lect­ed.

Nicholas Paul was ex­cep­tion­al win­ning two gold medals for T&T. He nabbed gold in the men's sprint, end­ing a 42-year drought.

His team­mate Njisane Phillip, came in sec­ond al­so cre­at­ed his­to­ry his own by be­com­ing one of the most suc­cess­ful lo­cal cy­clists tied with Roger Gib­bon.

Paul and Phillip achieve these sig­nif­i­cant af­ter part­ner­ing with Keron Bram­ble to help T&T win the gold medal in the men's team sprint.

While the men dom­i­nat­ed on track, women's cy­clist Teneil Camp­bell was ster­ling in the road events cop­ping sil­ver in both the time tri­al and road race, re­spec­tive­ly.

"As Erin Hartwell (na­tion­al cy­cling tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor) quite hon­est­ly put it any­thing less would have been dis­ap­point­ing. Teneil Camp­bell was out­stand­ing," said Lewis on how amaz­ing the na­tion­al cy­clists were at the 19-day event.

The re­main­ing na­tion­al ath­letes and of­fi­cials in­clud­ing chef de mis­sion Di­ane Hen­der­son were led by flag-bear­er Ke­ston Bled­man at the clos­ing cer­e­mo­ny held at Pe­ru's Na­tion­al Sta­di­um.

"It's ec­sta­t­ic to know that I was a part of the high­est ever medal haul at a Pan Am Games. Ath­letes are com­pet­ing more pre­pared, in some sports," said Hen­der­son who was ful­ly en­gaged in sup­port­ing the lo­cal ath­letes all across Li­ma over the pe­ri­od, cheer­ing them on and was al­ways on hand to present them the na­tion­al flag to cel­e­brate each mo­men­tous oc­ca­sion.

Lewis went on to promise that the TTOC will con­tin­ue to pro­vide T&T ath­letes with the sup­port that they need to ex­cel.

He said, "We will work along with MOS (Min­istry of Sports) and NSO (Na­tion­al Sport­ing Or­gan­i­sa­tions).

"With less than a year to go to Tokyo at this point, it's about en­sur­ing the ath­letes have the re­sources.

"I con­grat­u­late TeamT­TO at the end of the day they all had to go out and de­liv­er.

"I ex­pect that the TTOC will dis­trib­ute Pan Am medal bonus­es in the short­est pos­si­ble time. We are do­ing the com­pu­ta­tion.

"I am al­ways hap­py to sign off on the medal bonus­es.

"The Olympics is a much high­er lev­el than Pan Am, we have to im­prove.

The Unit­ed States led the stand­ings with 293 medals (120 gold, 88 sil­ver and 85 bronze), Brazil was next with 171 (55-45-71) and Mex­i­co was third with 136 medals (37-36-63).

The 2023 Pan Am Games will be held in San­ti­a­go, Chile.

Over­all stand­ings

1 *Unit­ed States*120 *88*85*293

2*Brazil*55*45*71*171

3*Mex­i­co*37*36*63*136

4 Cana­da*35*64*53*152

5*Cu­ba*33*27*38*98

6*Ar­genti­na*32 35 34 101

7*Colom­bia*28 23 33 84

8 *Chile*13 19 18 50

9*Pe­ru11 7 21 39

10*Do­mini­can Rep.10 13 17 40

11*Ecuador10 7 14 31

12*Venezuela*9 15 19 43

13*Ja­maica*6 6 7 19

14*Puer­to Ri­co*5 5 14

15*El Sal­vador*3 0 1 4

16 Guatemala*2 9 8 19

17*T&T*2 8 3 13

18 Uruguay*1 4 4 9

19*Paraguay*1 3 1 5

20*Bo­livia*1 2 2 5

21*Grena­da*1 1 0 2

22*Cos­ta Ri­ca*1 0 4 5

23 Saint Lu­cia1 0 1 2

24*Bar­ba­dos*1 0 0 1

24*British Vir­gin Isl*1 0 0 1

26 An­tigua & Bar­bu­da*0 1 2 3

27 Hon­duras0 1 1 2

28 Pana­ma*0*0*4*4

29 Nicaragua0 0 3 3

30*Aru­ba*0 0 1 1

30*Ba­hamas*0 0 1 1

T&T medals

Gold

Nicholas Paul (Men's Sprint)

Nicholas Paul, Njisane Phillip and Keron Bram­ble (Men's Team Sprint)

Sil­ver

Teneil Camp­bell (Women's Time Tri­al

Teneil Camp­bell (Women's Road Race)

Njisane Phillip (Men's Sprint)

Fe­lice Chow (Row­ing - Women's Sin­gles Sculls)

Michelle-Lee Ahye (Women's 100m)

Jereem Richards (Men's 200m)

Keshorn Wal­cott (Men's javelin)

Jerod El­cock, Ke­ston Bled­man, Akan­ni His­lop and Kyle Greaux (Men's 4x100m)

Bronze

Michael Alexan­der (Mn's wel­ter weight)

Dy­lan Carter (Men's 100m back­stroke)

Dwight St Hillaire, Richards, De­on Lendore, Machel Ce­de­nio (Men's 4x400m)

Source

Sports #TeamTTO #10golds24 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games 2019 Pan Am Games, Lima, Peru