Keith Enright Jr. is king of the highway
Good evening, I’m James Adderley and you’re locked into the show we call Sports Monday. Yesterday the Belize Cycling Association staged the Junior Cross Country Cycle Classic, an eighty-eight mile ride that left capital city Belmopan and headed west to San Ignacio then swung back to finish here inside Belize City at the Marion Jones Sporting Complex.
We take you to the eight a.m. start in front of the Belmopan Comprehensive High School, and the forty or so of Belize’s youngest and brightest cyclist are off in search of the garland.
At Mount Hope, Wilbert Banks struts his stuff to grab the station prize at the top of the hill.
The next big move comes from Francisco Avilez, who breaks away from the pack, to arrive at the turn around point in front of the police station at San Ignacio on the same solo flight. When Avilez gets gobbled up on the way back it would be the best we would see of him at he head of the pack as Junior National Road Champion Lyndon Garnett takes over the pace.
But around Camalote, Garnett gets company in the persons of George Lovell Junior and Leslie Sanchez. Outside of Roaring Creek George Lovell Junior decides to break for it and runs all to mile forty before he gets reeled in.
So it becomes a three-man race, Keith Enright, George Lovell Junior and the Junior National Road Champion, Lyndon Garnett.
At Hattieville Enright takes the station prize. And then uses that momentum to initiates a solo flight that proves to be the big move of the race. And here he is entering the Marin Jones alone–and there is still no one around when Keith Enright of Santino’s takes the big W in 2003.
Enright might have been helped by this major spill, which occurs first outside the stadium and we’re thankful to Jehovah that none of the youngster were severely hurt. Thank you Jah!
Now here’s the sprint for second place. It’s an eight-man sprint, Chris Galvez takes it, Leslie Sanchez settle for third, Wilbert Banks pulls up fourth and Giovanni Leslie rounds out the top five.
Meanwhile, the police and the officials must remember they’re only a part of the show; the story line belongs to the athletes. We believe some people might be looking at trees, so they can’t see the forest, which left us unable to get a post race interview yesterday at the stadium. We nevertheless caught up with the champ at his place of work today.
Keith Enright, Junior Cross Country Champ
“I just try and attack at mile sixteen to see how the break was operating. Then I see a little gap open and my sponsor came to me and tell me drive it, because Lyndon Garnett was suffering. And from then I just continue drive with it and I see a big gap, so I just continue from then.”
James Adderley
“Didn’t you feel a little bit concern that you were out alone in the head breeze by yourself?”
Keith Enright
“I was a bit scared and thing, because it was too far to run, but I trained really hard, I’m supposed to have the leg and everything to run that fast.”
Meanwhile folks, the seventy-fourth edition of the annual Cross Country Classic is set for this Saturday, April nineteenth, it’s the big one. And one of the teams hoping for the Holy Saturday glory is the newly formed Cool Runnings Ordonez Bike Shop, led by the big Barney Brown.
James Adderley
“You were riding with Santino’s earlier in the year, what led to that divorce?”
Barney Brown, Cool Runnings Ordonez Bike Shop
“Well it was an amicable divorce, and we just…I went my way because too many guys on the team, you can’t really win, or if somebody’s in the front, you really can’t just do what you wanna do, you just got to hold it down, so it was too many guys.”
James Adderley
“So you have come out and formed your own team, tell us about it.”
Barney Brown
“We had formed our own team by the name of Cool Runnings Ordonez Bike Shop. We have like eight members, we have myself, Ken Gladden, Leroy Betson, Mark Staine, we have a Guyanese that usually comes, Horace Bowels, Gapar Trejo and Kareem Flowers and Edison Usher. That’s our team for 2003.”
James Adderley
“So how do you feel, what chances you see this young team has, as far as winning this year’s Cross Country against the likes of Eduardo Uribe from Mexico and the high powered guys coming from inside the United States?”
Barney Brown
“I think we got the same chances. It’s just a matter of we have to really race pretty good and whoever moves, or Uribe moves, we got to go with him.”
James Adderley
“Tell us about the team concept on this team, are you the hit man?”
Barney Brown
“Right now on this team, I’m not really the hit man, but I think when it comes down to the end I’ll be the hit man, but on our team, it’s different guys. It’s not like one guy on our team; we work as a team, even if we go down, we go down like a team. So it’s not like a Jawmeighan thing we working for, or me, it’s just anybody on our team and there, then we just gonna work with that.”
He folks, you know it all comes to past Holy Saturday, start counting. That’s it for now, we invite you back same time, same place, next week. Jah over all! I’m James Adderley.
