SporTT says Cycling Federation was not compliant to get funding

A com­bi­na­tion of lack of funds, non-com­pli­ance or both is be­ing blamed for the heart of a na­tion be­ing bro­ken due to the in­abil­i­ty of the coun­try’s cy­cling team to par­tic­i­pate at the Ju­nior Pan Amer­i­can Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships.

The cham­pi­onships got un­der­way in Ve­r­acruz, Mex­i­co, on Mon­day; how­ev­er, a five-mem­ber ju­nior team of Cris­t­ian Nel­son, Kafele Des­ormeaux, Zion Lu­cas, Shame­ka Hoyte, and Kylee Young can­not be there. The trio of Des­ormeaux, Nel­son, and Lu­cas was ex­pect­ed to de­fend the ti­tle in the team sprint af­ter T&T’s three­some of Je­lani Nedd, Javon Ram­roop, and Ju­dah Nev­er­son won the gold medal by beat­ing Colom­bia’s trio of Mar­tin Gomez, Juan Jose Pala­cio, and Cami­lo Yara Juan in the fi­nal, clock­ing a nip­py 46.061 sec­onds in 2025.

The T&T team was sched­uled to leave lo­cal shores on Sat­ur­day, but up­on hear­ing word of the non-ap­proval of funds by the Sports Com­pa­ny of T&T (SporTT) for their trav­el, the mem­bers took to so­cial me­dia to vent their dis­ap­point­ment. This led to the crit­i­cism of SporTT and the Min­istry of Sports and Youth Af­fairs and its min­is­ter, Phillip Watts.

Gre­go­ry Dan­drade, chair­man of the Rac­ing Com­mit­tee of the T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion, was ap­point­ed coach of the team, along­side Sh­eryl Lea­cock (man­ag­er) and Shel­don Ramjit, the me­chan­ic. Dan­drade told Guardian Me­dia Sport on Sun­day, “We sub­mit­ted our re­quest for the fund­ing of the team of five cy­clists and three of­fi­cials al­most four months ago, with the fig­ure be­ing close to $200,000, so our bud­get was sent to Sport well in ad­vance of the event as part of sub­mit­ting cri­te­ria for all our ma­jor com­pe­ti­tions for na­tion­al teams.”

How­ev­er, on Mon­day, SporTT in a no­tice to Na­tion­al Gov­ern­ing Bod­ies (NG­Bs) of which the TTCF is a part, sought to clear the air in a re­lease that stat­ed, “SporTT ad­vis­es that, pur­suant to a Board di­rec­tive, all Na­tion­al Gov­ern­ing Bod­ies (NG­Bs) un­der its purview were for­mal­ly no­ti­fied by the Sport De­vel­op­ment Unit (SDU) in Feb­ru­ary 2026 that fund­ing ap­provals were placed on hold in­def­i­nite­ly, pend­ing ad­min­is­tra­tive and fi­nan­cial re­view process­es.”

“This po­si­tion was com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion (TTCF) more than three months ago, at a 29 Jan­u­ary 2026 vir­tu­al meet­ing. The de­ci­sion to place sub­ven­tions on hold was not tak­en light­ly and was in part nec­es­sary due to per­sis­tent com­pli­ance chal­lenges across sev­er­al NG­Bs, es­pe­cial­ly in light of on­go­ing fund­ing con­straints. Out­stand­ing Com­pli­ance Oblig­a­tions in re­la­tion to the TTCF, SporTT, con­firmed that there are cur­rent­ly eight (8) out­stand­ing ex­pense re­ports span­ning the cur­rent and pre­vi­ous fi­nan­cial years. Five (5) of these re­ports are present­ly un­der re­view by the SDU, pend­ing ad­di­tion­al sup­port­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion from the TTCF to com­plete the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion process.”

Ac­cord­ing to the SporTT, “The re­main­ing three (3) re­ports have not yet been sub­mit­ted by the TTCF. In line with gov­er­nance and ac­count­abil­i­ty best prac­tices, these out­stand­ing mat­ters must be re­solved be­fore fur­ther fund­ing re­quests can be con­sid­ered. SporTT com­mu­ni­cat­ed these re­quire­ments to the TTCF through es­tab­lished chan­nels well in ad­vance of the Cham­pi­onships, al­low­ing suf­fi­cient time for al­ter­na­tive arrange­ments to be ex­plored.”

At­tempts to reach Rowe­na Williams, the cy­cling fed­er­a­tion pres­i­dent, for a re­sponse on the mat­ter via phone and What’sApp mes­sage proved fu­tile. Guardian Me­dia Sports then at­tempt­ed to con­tact­ed Pa­tri­cia Le Blanch, sec­re­tary of the TTCF on Mon­day, but she said she could not of­fer a re­sponse at this time.

At­tempts were al­so made to con­tact Claire Orr, the TTCF trea­sur­er, via phone and What­sApp mes­sage, but up to Press time there was no re­sponse.

Mean­while, SporTT made it clear in its state­ment that “As a state en­ter­prise, SporTT aims to en­sure that all fund­ing dis­burse­ments are man­aged in ac­cor­dance with es­tab­lished gov­er­nance, ac­count­abil­i­ty, and fi­nan­cial com­pli­ance pro­ce­dures. SporTT con­tin­ues to demon­strate its com­mit­ment to sport de­vel­op­ment and per­for­mance; how­ev­er, it al­so has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to main­tain best prac­tice in ac­count­abil­i­ty and gov­er­nance in the man­age­ment of pub­lic funds.”

“These mea­sures help safe­guard the in­tegri­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty of pub­lic in­vest­ment in sport and must be ap­plied con­sis­tent­ly across all NG­Bs.”

Un­der the head­line, Ac­knowl­edge­ment, the SporTT said it ac­knowl­edges the dis­ap­point­ment ex­pe­ri­enced by the ath­letes, their fam­i­lies, and the wider cy­cling com­mu­ni­ty re­gard­ing the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the team’s par­tic­i­pa­tion and will con­tin­ue to work with NG­Bs in the best in­ter­est of na­tion­al sport.