There was much fan­fare on Sat­ur­day morn­ing at the Na­tion­al Cy­cling Cen­tre (NCC) in Bal­main, Cou­va as the NCC of­fi­cial­ly be­came the first UCI Satel­lite Cen­tre in the west­ern hemi­sphere.

It will serve the de­vel­op­ment of the sport of cy­cling at the lo­cal, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al lev­els.

The cen­tre came af­ter more than six years of hard work, ne­go­ti­a­tions and com­mit­ment among the var­i­ous par­ties in­volved, such as the world gov­ern­ing body—the UCI, the T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion which is led by Rowe­na Williams, the Min­istry of Sports and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment and the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T (SporTT).

The of­fi­cial com­mis­sion­ing took place with the grat­i­tude of the lo­cal track cy­cling com­mu­ni­ty, in­clu­sive of con­grat­u­la­to­ry video mes­sages from cy­cling great Nicholas Paul, Alexi Cos­ta-Ramirez, Phoebe Sandy and na­tion­al coach Njisane Phillip, who has rep­re­sent­ed T&T at the Olympic Games two times.

Williams told the au­di­ence that ath­letes and teams have al­ready be­gun reg­is­ter­ing their in­ter­est in vis­it­ing the fa­cil­i­ty to ac­cess the world-class track and oth­er train­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties that are ex­pect­ed to roll out in the new year.

Di­rec­tor of the UCI WCC Jacques Landry said, “The UCI World Cy­cling Cen­tre’s Satel­lites are vi­tal el­e­ments in our mis­sion to de­vel­op cy­cling and cy­clists in all re­gions of the world. They car­ry out im­por­tant work when it comes to the de­tec­tion, train­ing and prepa­ra­tion of ath­letes wish­ing to pur­sue their sport at the high­est lev­el, as well as the train­ing of peo­ple wish­ing to work in cy­cling-re­lat­ed fields.

“The fa­cil­i­ty and pro­fes­sion­als in Cou­va, form­ing the Con­ti­nen­tal De­vel­op­ment Satel­lite, will be a valu­able ad­di­tion to the ever-grow­ing net­work. We look for­ward to work­ing close­ly with its coach­es, ed­u­ca­tion­al tu­tors, and ad­min­is­tra­tive staff to help Caribbean ath­letes and cy­cling-re­lat­ed en­thu­si­asts re­alise their full po­ten­tial and, why not, make a ca­reer out of cy­cling.”

Min­is­ter of Sport & Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Sham­fa Cud­joe ex­pressed her en­thu­si­asm for the de­vel­op­ment as she un­veiled a plaque com­mem­o­rat­ing the fa­cil­i­ty’s cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, pro­claim­ing it as a his­toric day in T&T’s sport­ing his­to­ry and lega­cy.

Mean­while, CEO of SporTT Ja­son Williams said, “The com­mis­sion­ing of the UCI WCC Con­ti­nen­tal De­vel­op­ment Satel­lite at Cou­va is a ma­jor step to­wards the ef­fec­tive util­i­sa­tion of T&T’s world-class fa­cil­i­ties and ath­letes. Cy­cling is one of the dis­ci­plines that has con­tributed to the coun­try’s grow­ing in­ter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion in sport, and we are de­light­ed to part­ner with the TTCF to achieve this mile­stone; the first of more to come.”