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Friday, May 30, 2025

No European riders, supporters for Tobago Cycle Classic

by

WALTER ALIBEY
613 days ago
20230925
Jeffrey Charles - Chairman of the Tobago International Cycle Classic

Jeffrey Charles - Chairman of the Tobago International Cycle Classic

This year’s To­ba­go In­ter­na­tion­al Cy­cling Clas­sic has been hard hit by the ab­sence of its large Eu­ro­pean con­tin­gent.

Chief or­gan­is­er Jef­frey Charles said in the past the Eu­ro­peans, whether they were rid­ers or sup­port­ers, ac­count­ed for the biggest part of the sup­port for the event, which al­so im­pact­ed the tourism mar­ket in To­ba­go.

“They (the Eu­ro­peans) love To­ba­go and they love the event, so they would nor­mal­ly come for about two weeks on va­ca­tion, and they would spend mon­ey and so on, so that tourism is in ef­fect and the is­land ben­e­fits,” Charles told Guardian Me­dia Sports yes­ter­day dur­ing an in­ter­view about the event.

The ab­sence of the Eu­ro­pean con­tin­gent which fea­tures teams and sup­port­ers from Ger­many, Hol­land, Switzer­land, Den­mark, and France, was due to the lack of flights from Eu­rope to the sis­ter isle of To­ba­go.

Ac­cord­ing to Charles, first­ly, the flights are very ex­pen­sive, some­where be­tween 900 to 1400 eu­ros, which in T&T dol­lars is es­ti­mat­ed be­tween $6,492.00 to $10,100.00. He not­ed al­so that be­cause rid­ers, their fam­i­lies, and fans vis­it with lug­gage for the one week of the event, as well as an ad­di­tion­al week on va­ca­tion, it will be a chal­lenge for them this year to reach To­ba­go as they have to catch sev­er­al con­nect­ing flights.

Charles ex­plained fur­ther that in­for­ma­tion reach­ing him is that the Ger­man Air­line Con­dor is set to be­gin pro­vid­ing di­rect flights to the sis­ter isle but not be­fore No­vem­ber. “That will be too late for me, but it would have been good for the event,” Charles ex­plained.

The event is set to be launched on Wednes­day, at Cy­cling Vil­lage Com­pound, Crown Point, To­ba­go from 4 pm.

An hour lat­er, af­ter the launch of this year’s edi­tion will be the be­gin­ning of the event, a four-stage in­ter­na­tion­al race for Di­vi­sion 1 rid­ers; a three-stage open race for Di­vi­sion 2 rid­ers; and a two-stage recre­ation­al race for Di­vi­sion 3 rid­ers.

How­ev­er, Charles was al­so quick to note that the event will be much big­ger than last year which was af­fect­ed be­cause of the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic.

He said the 2022 edi­tion was the small­est in the race’s 35-year his­to­ry due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Charles said this year’s event will fea­ture about 130 rid­ers in all the di­vi­sions, which is an in­crease from last year’s 80 in all the di­vi­sions.

The bulk of the rid­ers, he said, will come from North Amer­i­ca, South Amer­i­ca, and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, and there will al­so be some rid­ers from the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, among many oth­er coun­tries, Charles ex­plained.

Ex­pect­ed to be fea­tured will be Colom­bia’s Nico­las Cano, Os­car Pa­chon, a two-time win­ner of the UCI Tour of To­ba­go, as well as Emile Abra­ham, who made a wel­come re­turn to the event last year.

Charles said this year’s event will al­so fea­ture the largest field of fe­male rid­ers.


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