Kaden Hopkins and Nic Narraway ensured Bermuda’s cyclists continued to thrive on the international stage with top-ten finishes at the Pan American Road Championships in Colombia last week.

Narraway and Hopkins finished seventh and tenth respectively in the time-trial with Hopkins finishing ninth in a sprint finish to the road race.

The younger of the two riders, Narraway was unlucky not to have finished higher in the time-trial with a puncture preventing him from potentially contending for a place on the podium.

“Seventh is a decent result, but when you factor in that I had to come to a complete stop in a race in which every second counts, it seems a little crazy,” Narraway said.

“From what I’ve been told before the flat I was in fifth and could have been even higher by the end. It’s hard to be upset with something so intertwined with the sport like a flat tyre ― it’s nothing you can control and you just have to accept it when it does happen.”

Hopkins made a quick recovery from a fractured collarbone and was pleased with his couple of top-ten finishes after not being able to race in the build-up to the competition.

“I’m past the disappointment phase of the injury, I just know that it’s something that happened and it was going to affect this first part of the season,” he said.

“I could only ride my TT bike twice before I came here and then just a couple of easy rides before the race, so to do the rides that I did, I was definitely very happy.

“Beforehand my form felt like it was very up in the air and I knew I could either be really good or really bad, and I didn’t know which one I was going to get.

“You don’t really need racing in the legs for a TT, because it’s a controlled effort the whole time. The road race was the one where I thought that I would struggle a lot, but I actually felt very good.”

Performing well without an ideal preparation could lead to many thinking what might have been but Hopkins is a man who tends to react positively rather than look back with regrets

“When you get into that super-high stress, high adrenalin situation, everything fades out and you just become hyperfocused,” Hopkins said.

“I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to sprint fully because when I had done some sprints and training in the last couple of days, I was still having a bit of soreness and pain around the shoulder and the collarbone.

“If my collarbone wasn’t bothering me and if I hadn’t broken it and had that in the back of my head, maybe a top five was possible, but you never know. But also, if I didn’t have the collarbone injury and I had a little bit more confidence, I would have made different decisions in the sprint. If I was in my best shape, I think I would have tried to follow the best sprinters through the group.

“So I just wanted to try and position myself well and I honestly rode the best sprint I could have, avoiding any more crashes or anything like that.

“It was a hectic sprint and to come away with ninth at the end of it, I honestly couldn’t ask for more and it’s just made me so much more motivated and ready to start the rest of the season.”

After flying out of Colombia on Monday, Hopkins has a quick turnaround with his next race scheduled for Saturday in Europe.

“My next race is the Classic Loire Atlantique, a race in France and it’s actually around the region where I used to be with my previous team Vendee U,” he said.

“So I know the region quite well and I’m looking forward to the rest of the season full of confidence.”