WAL­TER AL­IBEY

Madon­na Wheel­ers, the old­est reg­is­tered cy­cling club in T&T has come to the res­cue of this year's East­er In­ter­na­tion­al Cy­cling Grand Prix af­ter agree­ing on Fri­day to host and man­age the event on March 30 and 31 at the Ari­ma Velo­drome.

Through the Wheel­ers, the T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion al­so re­ceived spon­sor­ship to the tune of $97, 000 from the Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board (NL­CB). At a press brief­ing at the Ari­ma Velo­drome yes­ter­day, cy­cling fed­er­a­tion pres­i­dent Robert Far­ri­er said when Ari­ma Wheel­ers de­cid­ed to stage the event he per­son­al­ly de­cid­ed to as­sist, when he learnt of at­tempts by Ari­ma May­or Lisa Mor­ris Ju­lian to re­fur­bish the lights at the fa­cil­i­ty for the East­er.

"A good phone call to a cou­ple Arim­i­ans who took the ini­tia­tive to se­cure the spon­sor­ship for the event, and we got NL­CB on board. The sto­ry start­ed to un­fold in­to a pos­i­tive, as cy­cling will hap­pen at the Ari­ma Velo­drome on East­er week­end," Far­ri­er ex­plained. This year's Grand Prix will take a dif­fer­ent com­plex­ion as the fed­er­a­tion has been at­tempt­ing to align its cal­en­dar of events with the In­ter­na­tion­al Cy­cling Union (UCI), mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to get top in­ter­na­tion­al cy­clist for the event.

"The in­ter­na­tion­al cy­cling cal­en­dar ends af­ter the World Cham­pi­onship in March, which al­ways lends a chal­lenge for us to get top class in­ter­na­tion­al cy­clists for the East­er week­end. The UCI has changed its cal­en­dar in a par­tic­u­lar way where the track cal­en­dar ends in March. There­fore this week­end will bring a new di­men­sion east­er week­end cy­cling," Far­ri­er ex­plained.

He not­ed "There is some­thing call to­tal par­tic­i­pa­tion in sport, it lends to a lot of that in our cal­en­dar where we sat­is­fy all our oth­er cy­clists in T&T."

From this change the coun­try's top sprint­ers such as Njisane Phillip, Nicholas Paul and Kwe­si Brown, all of whom rep­re­sent­ed T&T at the Tis­sot UCI World Cup in Min­sk, Be­larus in Jan­u­ary will not be fea­tured. The trio, which fin­ished fifth in the Team Sprint at the World Cup, is cur­rent­ly at the Com­mon­wealth Games in Aus­tralia.

How­ev­er Far­ri­er be­lieves the grand prix event will be equal­ly en­ter­tain­ing as his fed­er­a­tion has been a key pro­mot­er of the sport and cy­clists through­out the Caribbean for many years, and is ex­pect­ed to be graced by the par­tic­i­pa­tion iof most of the re­gion­al rid­ers again this year.

The coun­try's top en­durance rid­ers such as Jabari White­man, Tyler Cole, Joshua Alexan­der, Alexi and Jes­si­ca Cos­ta, Cristien Farah are ex­pect­ed al­so to put on a good show, Far­ri­er said.

Madon­na Wheel­ers rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ronald Pe­ters said his club takes pride in stag­ing the event, be­ing the old­est club in T&T. He said it had the ho­n­our to have the first T&T cy­clist at the Olympic in Comp­ton Gon­za­les and through its found­ing mem­bers, it earned per­mis­sion from the UCI to form the T&TCF.