WAL­TER AL­IBEY

The coun­try's chances of a medal in cy­cling at the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil were boost­ed yes­ter­day by the news that Njisane Phillip will get his wish to have the per­son­nel of his choice with him.

It is ex­pect­ed that the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee will to­day name Varun Ma­hara­jh, to fill the po­si­tion of soigneur on the team, fol­low­ing the with­draw­al of David Fran­cis as man­ag­er. Fran­cis took the high ground and with­drew in the best in­ter­est of the cy­clist on Sat­ur­day.

Phillip's re­quest to have Ma­hara­jh as a mem­ber of his two-man team, which al­so in­cludes Eli­jah Greene as the me­chan­ic, came to fruition on Sat­ur­day af­ter he re­sist­ed the Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion's de­ci­sion to pick Fran­cis as man­ag­er.

Phillip was adamant that he would per­form bet­ter with Ma­hara­jh on his team, de­scrib­ing the en­durance rid­er as his train­ing part­ner, helper and right hand man and some­one who was aware of his needs as well as what needs to be done to pre­pare him for race day. He al­so hint­ed at not rid­ing for the twin-is­land re­pub­lic af­ter the Olympics if Ma­hara­jh was not on his team.

On Sat­ur­day how­ev­er the TTCF sent out a re­lease stat­ing that Fran­cis had vol­un­tar­i­ly de­cid­ed to with­draw as man­ag­er, due to the neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty. The de­ci­sion, ac­cord­ing to cy­cling's pres­i­dent Robert Far­ri­er was to pro­vide full sup­port for the cy­clist by giv­ing him all the nec­es­sary tools for him to per­form at his best. "We want to en­sure that he is com­fort­able and could give of his best for the coun­try. We hope he can bring home a medal," Far­ri­er said yes­ter­day.

Yes­ter­day Phillip's step­fa­ther Phillip White­man said Njisane was pleased with Fran­cis, say­ing his step­son has pub­licly said to Fran­cis that his choice of Ma­hara­jh had noth­ing to do with him as a per­son. White­man al­so ad­mit­ted that he too sent Fran­cis a mes­sage thank­ing him for his de­ci­sion, adding that the as­sis­tant rac­ing sec­re­tary al­so ac­knowl­edged it.

The de­ci­sion means that Njisane's coach Erin Hartwell can now turn his rid­er's at­ten­tion back to the Olympics, as his prepa­ra­tion has been in­ten­si­fied and the prospect of a medal at the Olympic in­creased. Ac­cord­ing to White­man "Hartwell has de­scribed the me­dia fren­zy as un­nec­es­sary."

Ac­cord­ing to White­man, the Cana­di­an coach has lit­er­al­ly had to changed his rid­er's fo­cus back to the Olympics. "What the TTCF did was cre­ate un­nec­es­sary pres­sure for Njisane at the games, as he will now have to per­form as they have giv­en him what he wants. I think all that me­dia fren­zy could have been avoid­ed if the cy­cling fed­er­a­tion had on­ly ho­n­oured its com­mit­ment from the start," White­man said.

He ad­dressed claims of Njisane's need for a man­ag­er, say­ing his step­son has gone through the en­tire qual­i­fi­ca­tion process with­out one.

White­man took a swipe at the man­age­ment of the TTCF, say­ing that T&T should have more cy­clists in Rio now af­ter Njisane did what he did to qual­i­fy for the 2012 Olympics in Lon­don Eng­land. "They should have been fo­cused on de­vel­op­ing young rid­ers and prepar­ing the se­niors for Olympics but they did not. Now in­stead of throw­ing their sup­port be­hind the lone T&T rid­er at the games, they are cre­at­ing prob­lems," White­man added.