SporTT blanks Jr Pan Am cycling team

The na­tion­al ju­nior cy­cling team sprint trio of Kafele De Sormeaux, Cris­t­ian Nel­son, and Zion Lu­cas’ hopes of de­fend­ing T&T’s team sprint ti­tle at the Ju­nior Pan Amer­i­can Cham­pi­onships in Xala­pa, Ve­r­acruz, Mex­i­co, end­ed be­fore they even set foot abroad af­ter the re­quest for fund­ing by the T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion to the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T (SPORTT) was turned down.

On Sat­ur­day, the trio, along with fel­low cy­clists Shame­ka Hoyte and Kylee Young, Sh­eryl Lea­cock (man­ag­er), Shel­don Ramjot (me­chan­ic),

An­to­nia Isaac-Nel­son, the moth­er of Nel­son, post­ed on her Face­book page on Sat­ur­day her hurt af­ter the team was with­drawn from par­tic­i­pa­tion. She stat­ed, “This is one of the most hurt­ful posts as a par­ent I have to make. To my son Cris­t­ian Nel­son, we saw all your hard work, all the sac­ri­fices, and the crash that you had in Skin­ner Park that could have turned out dif­fer­ent­ly 2 weeks be­fore as­sess­ment / tri­als to make the na­tion­al team for Ju­nior Panam in Mex­i­co. Your bike was com­plete­ly de­stroyed, yet still you de­fied all odds and bounced back with a PB su­per­sed­ing the qual­i­fy­ing time of 10.8. Less than 2 weeks ago you did that, son. Your dream came true; you made the na­tion­al team, all bags packed, ready to make the red, black and white proud to leave to rep­re­sent your coun­try, on­ly to be told you are not go­ing again be­cause the peo­ple who are sup­posed to be look­ing out for the youths de­cid­ed that you and your team­mates are not wor­thy to rep­re­sent it. Mere hours be­fore you leave, no fund­ing, no re­lease.

No, we pre­fer the elites over the ju­niors; those were many un­clear rea­sons that we got from all en­ti­ties, but the end re­sult is that they say no to you all.

To the com­mu­ni­ty who sup­port­ed Cris­t­ian and me and all the oth­er cy­clists who are go­ing to con­tin­ue to sup­port them. We are tru­ly dis­ap­point­ed and hurt. Cris­t­ian, your tal­ent is on a dif­fer­ent lev­el. And when God says yes, no man can say no. You will be ok, and this is for all the oth­er team­mates as well.”

Gre­go­ry Dan­drade, a long-serv­ing T&TCF of­fi­cial and chair­man of the Rac­ing Com­mit­tee of the T&TCF, con­firmed for Guardian Me­dia Sports that the team was with­drawn from the com­pe­ti­tion at the last minute af­ter they were in­formed on Thurs­day by sports of­fi­cial and for­mer na­tion­al women’s vol­ley­ball play­er Court­nee-Mae Clif­ford that their re­quest for fund­ing was not ap­proved.

Dan­drade said, “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.”

He added, “And the team was due to leave on Sat­ur­day morn­ing (May 2), but at the last minute we were in­formed that we would not be get­ting the funds, as the bud­get was not ap­proved for us. It’s re­al­ly heart­break­ing be­cause the young cy­clists have made a num­ber of sac­ri­fices to have a chance to de­fend their ti­tle and bring glo­ry to the coun­try, even get­ting their ex­ams resched­uled, but now all their hard work and ef­forts have gone down the drain.”

Last year, the trio of Je­lani Nedd, Javon Ram­roop and Ju­dah Nev­er­son won the team sprint event in Li­ma, Pe­ru, de­feat­ing Colom­bia’s Mar­tin Gomez, Juan Jose Pala­cio and Cami­lo Yara Juan in the fi­nal, clock­ing a nip­py 46.061 sec­onds to claim top po­si­tion.

In the process, the Trinidad and To­ba­go team set a new na­tion­al ju­nior team sprint record.

Up to press time, the email re­quest sent to SporTT for the rea­sons be­hind its de­ci­sion to not grant the fund­ing for the team to at­tend the cham­pi­onship was still forth­com­ing even though it was sent by 1 pm to their com­mu­ni­ca­tions@sportt-tt.com email ad­dress.

In Ju­ly 2025, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s men’s and women’s hock­ey teams missed par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Pan Am Cup in Mon­te­v­ideo, Uruguay, from Ju­ly 24 to Au­gust 3 af­ter the T&T Hock­ey Board failed to se­cure fi­nan­cial sup­port from SporTT.

The Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs, led by Sports Min­is­ter Phillip Watts, had stat­ed that the rea­son that no fund­ing was re­leased for the teams was be­cause of the T&T Hock­ey Board – “non-com­pli­ance in sub­mit­ting au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments on time.”