Na­tion­al cy­clist Njisane Phillip feels that tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor Erin Hartwell did not de­liv­er on his promise to get T&T's cy­cling teams to the up­com­ing Tokyo Olympics.

"Erin's job when he came to T&T was to qual­i­fy teams. Present­ly if you check his (job) de­scrip­tion he was sup­posed to qual­i­fy team sprint so he failed. At the end of the day in his four years, he failed. He wasn’t able to get T&T to the Olympics in the team sprint.

"T&T had al­ready qual­i­fied for sprint and be­fore 2012-2016. So he didn’t re­al­ly come here to do any­thing new, we have been do­ing this by our­selves," said Phillip harsh­ly, dur­ing an in­ter­view with host An­dre Er­rol Bap­tiste on Is­ports on i95.5fm on Sat­ur­day where he ad­mit­ted that he is the cy­clist in ques­tion in the al­leged dop­ing in­fringe­ment at the Pan Amer­i­can Games held in Li­ma Pe­ru, last year.

How­ev­er, the lead­ing na­tion­al cy­clist was con­fi­dent that he will be ex­on­er­at­ed al­though not giv­ing de­tails on the mat­ter and be­lieves de­spite the ab­sence of Hartwell, the team will not be af­fect­ed at the Tokyo Olympics, say­ing: "The team is not go­ing to strug­gle in the Olympic Games."

<Hartwell aban­doned us>

Phillip said: "I was the per­son who got him his job. At the end of the day, I didn't like how he aban­doned us, this was his job. He came and signed up for a job and when he re­alised we weren’t qual­i­fy­ing, he want­ed to leave, he de­cid­ed to have bad blood with us.

"We've been hav­ing prob­lems with him since Hong Kong. He knew that we weren't go­ing to qual­i­fy any more based on our re­sults in Hong Kong be­cause we placed sev­enth.

"From since that World Cup he has been us­ing all dif­fer­ent things, tac­tics to kind of ba­si­cal­ly dis­tance him­self from the team. At the end of the day, even if he had a prob­lem with Njisane why didn't he stay for Kwe­si Brown and Nicholas Paul. Nicholas is the World record-hold­er. Nicholas helped Erin de­vel­op his re­sume as well, and for T&T to get the World record that's a big deal. To turn­around two months be­fore the Olympics and aban­don the team to go to Chi­na.

"I un­der­stand he want­ed to keep the team en­vi­ron­ment but you see Hartwell is get­ting US$11,000 a month, Njisane Phillip is not even get­ting TT$11,000 a month. I'm try­ing to ex­plain this to every­one across the board and the Min­istry of Sports as well. When I spoke to her (Min­is­ter Sham­fa Cud­joe) and I want­ed to know what is go­ing on with the fund­ing and with the team and she ba­si­cal­ly said they go­ing to get back to us soon I asked based on the mil­lion dol­lars, are we go­ing to get a stipend or some­thing to pay for train­ing to pay for food?” de­clared a frus­trat­ed Phillip.

<No fund­ing for cy­clists>

Rep­re­sent­ing T&T is very cost­ly he said with lit­tle or no fund­ing for na­tion­al ath­letes.

"I don’t know what is re­al­ly go­ing on with the elite fund­ing. For the past three years, we haven't re­ceived any fund­ing, not just cy­cling but sports across the board."

"No one is get­ting fund­ing. The on­ly fund­ing we ac­tu­al­ly re­ceiv­ing right now is from the Prime Min­is­ter, which is the Prime Min­is­ter's grant; the Sports and Cul­ture Fund. In 2019, went there, they even gave me $6,000 last year be­cause they not pay­ing out the $250,000. Rea­son be­ing the Min­istry of Sports is not pay­ing out the $250,000. I don’t know but with­in the sports pol­i­cy, we are ranked with­in the Top 40 in the world and still noth­ing. I spoke to the Min­is­ter of Sports as well and just noth­ing."

Phillip said that the last thing he and his fel­low cy­clists tried to do was to get fund­ing again from the Prime Min­is­ter grant but was told the cy­cling fed­er­a­tion was giv­en a mil­lion dol­lars but they were not the re­cip­i­ents of any funds which led to "wheel sit­u­a­tion".

"Pre­vi­ous­ly, the na­tion­al team had no equip­ment. All the equip­ment is my equip­ment, the five wheels that the team has been us­ing. Nicholas Paul, at one point in time, had no equip­ment. He was us­ing my wheels when he set the record at the CAC (Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean) Games. Wheels that I own, that my fa­ther pur­chased for me, so over the ten years I've been col­lect­ing wheels. I've al­ways been tak­ing care of my equip­ment so I'm able to let my team­mates use them. Some wheels were dam­aged in the process so when they re­im­bursed them (TTCF), I end­ed up tak­ing what be­longed to me."

<Let's wait on CAS de­ci­sion>

On get­ting his name cleared, the Lon­don Olympics fourth-place fin­ish­er in the match sprint said: "Can’t re­al­ly talk about that right now but a lot of peo­ple have mis­in­for­ma­tion. That is in the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion and I think I will be com­ing out good. At the end of the day, I nev­er cheat­ed any­body in the sport and soon­er or lat­er my name will be cleared.

"That vi­o­la­tion has been go­ing on since last year Au­gust and I've been per­form­ing at the high­est lev­el af­ter that. My gov­ern­ing body hasn't stepped in and giv­en me a pro­vi­sion­al sus­pen­sion or any­thing right now. They are just ba­si­cal­ly go­ing through the pa­per­work be­cause based on the sub­stance it's not a per­for­mance-en­hance­ment and it wasn’t some­thing used to cheat my com­peti­tors. They ba­si­cal­ly have that in­for­ma­tion on pa­per, they tak­ing that in­to con­sid­er­a­tion and that's why I'm still cleared to ride."

The 28-year-old is will­ing to re­turn to the na­tion­al cy­cling fold.

"Once they start to treat us the way we need to be treat­ed I don't mind com­ing back and giv­ing Trinidad 100 per cent but right now based on how the sys­tem is struc­tured and how the sys­tem is work­ing I can't af­ford to give T&T no more time. I def­i­nite­ly think that's go­ing to be the best op­tion for them right now be­ing away from Trinidad be­ing able to fo­cus over there. Nicholas over there, he's fa­mil­iar with the place and I think he'll be great, you know to­day (Sat­ur­day) he did a new per­son­al best from 9.5 so I think it's go­ing to work out for him. Def­i­nite­ly, any­thing these boys need my help I am a phone call away any­time they need me, I'm will­ing to as­sist."

"Hope­ful­ly I can join Nicholas again next year and go through to 2024 again things have to be in place for us to be able to step back out­per­form to the high­est lev­el be­cause again we not just na­tion­al cham­pi­ons any­more we are World-class and they have to be able to in­vest in us like we are World-class."