The East­er Cy­cling Grand Prix will re­turn to the Ari­ma Velo­drome soon.

The T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion through its pres­i­dent Rowe­na Williams has been work­ing on hav­ing re­pairs done to com­mu­ni­ty fa­cil­i­ties in Siparia (Ir­win Park), San Fer­nan­do (Skin­ner Park) and the Ari­ma Velo­drome for use dur­ing the 2022 sea­son.

Re­pair works are be­ing done on all three fa­cil­i­ties by the three re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions. Williams told Guardian Me­dia Sports on Mon­day that she has been in con­tact with of­fi­cials of the var­i­ous fa­cil­i­ties in an at­tempt to have them ready. She said The Ari­ma fa­cil­i­ty has not had any East­er Gand Prix ac­tion since 2019 and re­mind­ed all about the his­to­ry of the fa­cil­i­ty with re­gards to cy­cling.

"We did have a sched­uled meet­ing with Cagney Casimire, the May­or of Ari­ma, to­geth­er with the coun­cil­lors and mem­bers of the Ari­ma Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion, as we seek to get things ready and for when we start back our cy­cling sea­son 2022. So what we tried to do is we start­ed dis­cus­sions to have the Ari­ma Velo­drome put things in place to clean up the tracks, get the lines paint­ed and get some main­te­nance work done. As you know, the track is one of the tracks that we have been us­ing over the years and we don't want to see it dis­in­te­grate and not in use. That is a track that a lot of our Olympic cy­clists have been train­ing on, and have been us­ing over the years and it has pro­duced many great per­for­mances. We def­i­nite­ly don't want to lose sight of the grass­roots tracks that we have, not just Ari­ma, but we're al­so talk­ing about Skin­ner Park (San Fer­nan­do) and Siparia (Ir­win Park). We re­al­ly want to get back to that place where our tracks are go­ing to be used, our kids can come back out and race, and of course bring out the com­mu­ni­ties in those ar­eas," Williams ex­plained.

Williams said that while the TTCF has its sights set on Ari­ma, it will not hap­pen for the next year's East­er sea­son, as the Grand Prix is sup­posed to co­in­cide with the of­fi­cial open­ing of the new­ly re­fur­bished Skin­ner Park fa­cil­i­ty.

Al­so called the 'Park', the main sport­ing hub of the south­land is be­ing trans­formed in­to a state-of-the-art mul­ti­pur­pose fa­cil­i­ty that will en­hance sports in the San Fer­nan­do and sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties. How­ev­er, at Ari­ma, clubs such as Ari­ma Wheel­ers, which has con­sis­tent­ly used the fa­cil­i­ty, will con­tin­ue to use it. Kirt Cun­ning­ham, a coach at the club, said the track is in need of clean­ing and the lights need to be re­paired al­so.

Williams, who be­came pres­i­dent of the TTCF in Feb­ru­ary said her or­gan­i­sa­tion wants to pre­serve the his­to­ry that the Ari­ma Velo­drome has left.

"His­to­ry has it that the Ari­ma track is known for the East­er Grand Prix every year. Good Fri­day, Glo­ria Sat­ur­day, East­er Sun­day, there was al­ways a his­to­ry that east­er week­end you al­ways had to be in Ari­ma. So that his­toric mo­ment of cy­cling has al­ways been there and the Armini­ans love cy­cling so we def­i­nite­ly don't want to lose that. I have al­ready done tours to all the fa­cil­i­ties ac­tu­al­ly, I have al­ready done Siparia and I am in con­sul­ta­tion with In­dar­jit Singh, the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, as well as one of the coun­cil­lors Derek Bowen. And we have done the site vis­it to Skin­ner Park re­cent­ly, where we sought to test the con­crete that they're us­ing be­cause it's go­ing to be a con­crete track, so that vis­it was done a few weeks ago. Re­al­ly and tru­ly, we want to re­mind our cy­cling fans that we want to pre­serve those fa­cil­i­ties that we know were used to bring our cy­cling to the high­est lev­el. The young ones, those are the tracks that will be used to de­vel­op them and bring them to that high-lev­el per­for­mance, and then they will trans­verse to go­ing in­to the Na­tion­al Cy­cling Cen­tre in Cou­va," Williams con­clud­ed.