Sean Nero

For­mer Olympic cy­clist Gene Samuel says there are lo­cal cy­cling train­ers mis­rep­re­sent­ing them­selves as coach­es; a qual­i­fi­ca­tion they have not yet earned and it is time for this prac­tice to stop."As far as I'm con­cerned you all are just train­ers work­ing to be coach­es. A lot has changed. Sci­ence has gone. We need to un­der­stand and work to­geth­er. Over the years, the coach­es have re­al­ly made a good ef­fort. Get­ting a coach­ing cer­tifi­cate doesn't make you a coach, he said.Samuel launched the at­tack on club per­son­nel en­gag­ing in this fa�ade at Sat­ur­day's Na­tion­al Cham­pi­onships Awards staged by the T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion (TTCF) and held at the VIP Lounge, Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Port-of-Spain. "I was fourth in the Olympics, Pan Am cham­pi­on and the top rid­er in the world for many years. I didn't con­sid­er my­self a coach. I had a suc­cess­ful team since then. Be­ing able to achieve with­out drugs, came down to prac­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ence, and I would like to think that out of these eight or ten coach­es (we have), in a few years, that we hope­ful­ly would get at least three coach­es," he said.

Samuel added, "You can­not ex­pect to train like the guys that are on drugs. A lot of peo­ple use pro­grammes for peo­ple on drugs. So you have to be ed­u­cat­ed and have com­mon sense to know how much your rid­ers can take. Again, com­mu­ni­ca­tion! Cy­clists need to com­mu­ni­cate with their coach­es. We are the coach­es, but if some­thing is not work­ing for you, sit down and dis­cuss it with your coach."Re­flect­ing on the chal­lenges that have faced the sport over the past 15 years, the for­mer Pan Am medal­list said ego was to be blamed.In his es­ti­ma­tion, the last decade-and-a-half was laced with self­ish­ness which led the po­ten­tial growth of the sport be­com­ing sti­fled.Had fa­cil­i­ta­tors act­ed ma­ture, Samuel said, and com­mon sense had pre­vailed this coun­try would not have had to wait 15 years for Njisane Phillip.He de­clared it was time for Phillip to end his lone­ly jour­ney and be joined by tal­ent­ed lo­cal ath­letes on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage, with the ul­ti­mate aim of boost­ing T&T medal count at meets."Thank God for Njisane Phillip. He's do­ing mar­vel­lous. We should not have had to wait that long for a Njisane Phillip. It comes down to dis­ci­pline from the cy­clist. You can learn some­thing from a youth. Every year I change my pro­grammes. With­in a month or two you will see if it's work­ing or not. We have been blessed in the Caribbean with tal­ent. The Lord has blessed us with tal­ent," Samuel said.

He added, "I have been pleas­ant­ly sur­prised by coach­es, com­ing to me in the last year or two try­ing to un­der­stand the dif­fer­ent en­er­gy sys­tems, af­ter they have suc­cess­ful­ly got­ten their diplo­mas in the coach­ing cours­es. I've see rid­ers who we have as­sist­ed from dif­fer­ent teams, im­prove tremen­dous­ly and I'm mak­ing an ap­peal to you'll: no one per­son know every­thing. Coach­es, you have tak­en one step. Let's try and take it three steps down the road."On the is­sue of fund­ing, Samuel ap­pealed to the Sport Com­pa­ny to make the dis­burse­ment of funds more time­ly, as it would help the TTCF achieve its tar­gets in the area of hu­man de­vel­op­ment and im­prove the im­age of the gov­ern­ing body in the eyes of its mem­ber­ship and the pub­lic.He then took club of­fi­cials with woe­ful at­ten­dance at coun­cil meet­ings task, claim­ing that they were among the most no­to­ri­ous pub­lish­ers of pro­pa­gan­da against the Fed­er­a­tion.Samuel laud­ed the gov­er­nance ideals of Fed­er­a­tion pres­i­dent Rowe­na Williams who he de­scribed as be­ing a stick­ler for re­spect­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion con­sti­tu­tion."A lot of pres­i­dents do their own thing. You must re­spect the con­sti­tu­tion. That's why I have sup­port­ed the Fed­er­a­tion a lot, be­cause they are fol­low­ing the con­sti­tu­tion. Whether madam pres­i­dent likes it or not, she doesn't do her own thing the next day, like a lot of past pres­i­dents have done."My eyes were opened last year when for­mer sen­a­tor Phillip Mar­shall showed us what this Fed­er­a­tion ex­ec­u­tive did, tak­ing us out of a hole from the pre­vi­ous pres­i­dents by half-a-mil­lion dol­lars and be­ing cut at the same time by the Sport Com­pa­ny."You can­not please every­one! That alone should show where the ex­ec­u­tive is try­ing to go. No one is per­fect. As long as we move fair­ly and we do our best and every­body try to move for­ward, all are go­ing to move to­geth­er and try to get this sport where I will love it to be," Samuel said.