For­mer na­tion­al cy­clist Ronal­do Dick­ie Jr has died. The cur­rent voice of the sport at cy­cling events suf­fered a stroke and died at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal on Fri­day. On No­vem­ber 5, the fra­ter­ni­ty al­so lost its for­mer vice pres­i­dent Ter­ence Chap­man.

Dick­ie Jr, 44, came from a cy­cling fam­i­ly and moved from a na­tion­al cy­clist up through the ranks to the Vice Pres­i­dent of Rac­ing. He be­came a cer­ti­fied com­mis­saire and then an­nounc­er, a role he per­formed at al­most every cy­cling event in Trinidad and To­ba­go for al­most the last decade.

Soon af­ter the news of him re­ceiv­ing a stroke start­ed to spread, came the news of his un­time­ly death.

Dick­ie was the voice of cy­cling, heard any time there were cy­cling events tak­ing place, ei­ther for lo­cal or in­ter­na­tion­al events.

Iron­i­cal­ly, both fam­i­lies (Dick­ie and Chap­man) were de­vout cy­cling fam­i­lies from the south­land which played in­stru­men­tal roles in the de­vel­op­ment of sport both ad­min­is­tra­tive­ly and tech­ni­cal­ly.

Rowe­na Williams, the T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion could not hold back the tears, say­ing the peo­ple with all the lega­cy and his­to­ry in the sport of cy­cling are go­ing. "Right now it is re­al­ly hard for me, I don't know how to process all this. I do not know if I want to stay in the sport any­more," an emo­tion­al Williams said yes­ter­day.

She promised her fed­er­a­tion will work with the be­reaved fam­i­ly to de­ter­mine if any­thing can be done in Dick­ie's ho­n­our. The cy­clist known as the voice of cy­cling in T&T has been a tire­less work­er for the sport and was al­ways around to of­fer his as­sis­tance.

Ac­cord­ing to the lo­cal cy­cling boss, Dick­ie came from an en­tire fam­i­ly of cy­clists and cy­cling ad­min­is­tra­tors, not­ing that his fa­ther Ronald Dick­ie Sr was a vice pres­i­dent of the cy­cling fed­er­a­tion, his un­cle Desmond Dick­ie was a na­tion­al coach, his moth­er Pa­tri­cia Dick­ie was a Rac­ing sec­re­tary, his broth­ers Richard and Ryan were al­so cy­clists, and the pop­u­lar bell-man known as Ra­man was an­oth­er of his un­cles. Fu­ner­al arrange­ments for Dick­ie Jr are be­ing made.