WAL­TER AL­IBEY

His dream was and still is to have a T&T team at the Tour de France, the biggest in­ter­na­tion­al road race in the world. Bea­con In­sur­ance own­er Ger­ald Hadeed still awaits this dream to ma­te­ri­alise, but he is con­tin­u­ing his sup­port to lo­cal cy­cling by fund­ing the sixth edi­tion of the Bea­con on the Av­enue Cy­cle Clas­sic on Oc­to­ber 4.

Michael Phillips, the pro­mot­er of this event paid trib­ute to Hadeed, yes­ter­day for his over 20 years of con­tri­bu­tion to the sport. He al­so called on oth­er cor­po­rate cit­i­zens to ho­n­our its Cor­po­rate So­cial Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to the pub­lic by fol­low­ing in Hadeed’s foot­steps, par­tic­u­lar­ly at this time where there is need for so­cial up­lift­ment in the na­tion.

Phillips said it was Hadeed who ap­proached him 20 years ago and asked him to put on the coun­try’s first Na­tion­al Cham­pi­onship Road Race, a gru­elling 160 kilo­me­tre grind from the White Hall, that took par­tic­i­pants over the La­dy Young Road, through Port of Spain and back to the start­ing point.

“That first race was won by To­bag­on­ian Emile Abra­ham, but af­ter that Hadeed al­ways called me to tell me about some of the plans he had for the sport and what he would like to see hap­pen, such was his pas­sion for cy­cling,” said Phillips.

He con­tin­ued: “Hadeed was a God-sent, as he, un­like oth­er com­pa­nies, nev­er looked back for any­thing in re­turn, but rather for peo­ple to have a good time and the sport to de­vel­op.”

Phillip, a for­mer chair­man of the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T de­scribed Hadeed’s con­tri­bu­tion as one of pa­tri­o­tism and na­tion­al pride that cor­po­rate cit­i­zens should strive to em­u­late, say­ing it is not al­ways about get­ting back.

He cred­its Hadeed for the progress the sport of cy­cling has made in re­cent times, rang­ing from the qual­i­fi­ca­tion of cy­clists to the Olympic Games to the coun­try host­ing the Elite Pan Am Ju­nior and Se­nior Cham­pi­onships.

Hadeed is set to re­ceive a bag of good­ies at this year’s Bea­con Cy­cling on the Av­enue, but Phillips said he was still in the process of work­ing out who the event’s par­tic­i­pants will be and how the vet­er­an cy­clist will be ho­n­oured.

“All I can say is that last year’s win­ner Nor­landy Sanchez from the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic has con­firmed that he will be here to de­fend the ti­tle he won,” he re­vealed.

Fur­ther de­tails of the event will be re­vealed at an­oth­er launch on Oc­to­ber 3, the day be­fore the event.