The world gov­ern­ing body for the sport of cy­cling, the Union Cy­cliste In­ter­na­tionale (UCI) or the In­ter­na­tion­al Cy­cling Union, has of­fi­cial­ly an­nounced the in­clu­sion of the To­ba­go Cy­cling Clas­sic in­to the in­ter­na­tion­al cy­cling cal­en­dar of UCI sanc­tioned events. T&T is the first ever eng­lish speak­ing Caribbean coun­try to have a na­tion­al cy­cling event list­ed in the cy­cling body's of­fi­cial pro­gramme of events. The To­ba­go Cy­cling Clas­sic in it's 25th an­niver­sary was found­ed in 1986 by Jef­frey Charles who adopt­ed the event from the To­ba­go Cy­cling Race which was ini­ti­at­ed in 1983 by a group of friends from To­ba­go and de­vel­oped the event from one which fea­tured no re­gion­al or in­ter­na­tion­al com­peti­tors to one which at­tracts more than 500 par­tic­i­pants and fans from over 30 coun­tries.

In 2010, the To­ba­go Cy­cling Clas­sic was chal­lenged from ath­letes from the Caribbean, Latin Amer­i­ca, the USA, Eu­rope, the Mid­dle East and Africa. Af­ter grow­ing stan­dards of com­pe­ti­tion in every pass­ing year, the race be­gan to re­ceive pos­i­tive re­views from the re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al cy­cling fra­ter­ni­ty which even­tu­al­ly led to the at­ten­tion of the UCI Com­mit­tee. In a re­lease, Pierre Hut­se­baut, UCI In­ter­na­tion­al Cy­cling Union Tour Ad­vis­er for the Amer­i­c­as praised the event or­gan­is­er and com­mit­tee for the achieve­ment of gain­ing in­ter­na­tion­al ac­cred­i­ta­tion from the UCI. "The World Cy­cling Body ap­plaus­es the re­lent­less ef­fort of the event or­gan­is­er Jef­frey Charles and his com­mit­tee on their achieve­ment in el­e­vat­ing the To­ba­go Cy­cling Clas­sic to in­ter­na­tion­al sta­tus. The UCI Com­mit­tee looks for­ward to this new al­liance," said Hut­se­baut on be­half of the UCI.

The ac­cred­i­ta­tion of the UCI brand­ing is ex­pect­ed to sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­crease the in­volve­ment of ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al cy­cling coun­tries, fed­er­a­tions, na­tion­al teams and pro­fes­sion­al teams which all seek to chal­lenge UCI events in or­der to achieve sought af­ter UCI points with the in­ten­tion to im­prove in­di­vid­ual and team rank­ing on the world stage. To­ba­go is al­so ex­pect­ed to reap mon­u­men­tal ben­e­fits while be­ing mar­ket­ed as a le­git­i­mate des­ti­na­tion for sport­ing tourism through ex­po­sure on sport­ing net­works, sport mag­a­zines and sport­ing Web sites. The To­ba­go Cy­cling Clas­sic will take place this year be­tween Sep­tem­ber 27 to Oc­to­ber 2.