Team TTO will not defend team sprint title at the Junior Pan American Cycling Championships

In­de­fati­ga­ble, in­domitable, un­sub­du­able. Three words that may be say­ing the same thing. But I have used them to make the point that they are char­ac­ter­is­tics that are need­ed–very much need­ed–to sur­vive, far less thrive, in this space we call Trinidad and To­ba­go.

​The en­vi­ron­ment and so­ci­ety have a way of wear­ing you down, es­pe­cial­ly if you are try­ing to do things the right way, how­ev­er “right” may be de­fined. What adds to the dif­fi­cul­ty is that peo­ple are very con­vinc­ing, and it is very easy to be paint­ed as the “bad per­son–evil per­son­i­fied”.

​We must not as­sume trust is enough pro­tec­tion. Pa­per­work is crit­i­cal. Valid, gen­uine, fool­proof pa­per­work can be worth more when trust breaks down.

​What prompt­ed me to switch from my in­tend­ed top­ic for to­day’s Things That Mat­ter col­umn was the head­line in Sun­day’s Trinidad Guardian: “SporTT blanks Jr Pan Am cy­cling team.”

​On read­ing the ar­ti­cle, we learned that the na­tion­al ju­nior cy­cling team sprint trio of Kafele Des­ormeaux, 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 he re­quest for fund­ing by the T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion (TTCF) to the Sports Com­pa­ny of T&T (SporTT) was turned down.

​An­to­nia Isaac-Nel­son, moth­er of one of the cy­clists, made a Face­book post ad­dressed to her 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; there were many un­clear rea­sons that we got from all en­ti­ties, but the end re­sult is that they say no to you all.”

Gre­go­ry Dan­drade, chair­man of the Rac­ing Com­mit­tee of the TTCF, con­firmed for Guardian Me­dia Sports that the team was with­drawn from the com­pe­ti­tion at the last minute af­ter they were in­formed on Thurs­day by a sports of­fi­cial that their re­quest for fund­ing was not ap­proved.

​He con­firmed the team was due to leave on Sat­ur­day morn­ing (May 2), but at the last minute, the TTCF was in­formed they would not be get­ting the funds as the bud­get was not ap­proved. He made the point that it was heart­break­ing be­cause the young cy­clists had made a num­ber of sac­ri­fices to have a chance to de­fend their ti­tle and bring glo­ry to the coun­try, but now all their hard work and ef­fort has gone down the drain.

​The ar­ti­cle seemed to sug­gest that the TTCF was point­ing the prover­bial fin­ger at SporTT. I have to ad­mit that some­thing seemed at vari­ance with the pol­i­cy re­gard­ing the process for fund­ing re­quests and ap­proval. What is in no doubt is the fact that, yet again, the ath­letes–in this case, young cy­clists–were pay­ing the price for ad­min­is­tra­tive fail­ure.

​Then came the SporTT me­dia re­lease that out­lined its side of the sto­ry. The head­line read: “SporTT clar­i­fies fund­ing po­si­tion and reaf­firms com­mit­ment to ac­count­abil­i­ty.”

​Here is the most im­por­tant truth that mat­ters: the young cy­clists must now find with­in them­selves the re­silience to move for­ward. They must be in­de­fati­ga­ble, in­domitable, and un­sub­du­able to over­come this heart­break­ing set­back. It is not easy!