Clay­ton Clarke

The 26th edi­tion of To­ba­go In­ter­na­tion­al Cy­cling Clas­sic ped­als off lat­er to­day at the Coral Gar­dens, Buc­coo. Cy­clists from close to 20 coun­tries will line-up for first event of the five-day cy­cling fest, a cir­cuit race, which gets un­der­way from 8.30 am. Race co-or­di­na­tor Jef­frey Charles said this year will see sev­er­al pro­fes­sion­al in­ter­na­tion­al teams com­pet­ing for the first time. "The UCI pro teams will bring a lot of at­ten­tion to the race," said Charles who an­tic­i­pates that the com­pe­ti­tion will be one of the keen­est ever. "This year, what is good, it is go­ing to be an even play­ing field. The com­pe­ti­tion is a lot more even than in pre­vi­ous years. We have to close 15 top cy­clists who can win."

This year's race will fea­ture three In­ter­na­tion­al Cy­cling Union (UCI) Pro teams, sev­en in­ter­na­tion­al elite teams and four Caribbean teams, with cy­clists com­ing from Aus­tria, Ger­many, Switzer­land, Czech Re­pub­lic, Bel­gium, Den­mark, Eng­land, Isle of Man, Cana­da, USA, Co­lum­bia, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Guade­loupe, Aru­ba, St Vin­cent, St Lu­cia, Bar­ba­dos, Guyana, Ja­maica and T&T. The Aus­tri­an team will be re­turn­ing to de­fend their UCI 1.2 Tour of To­ba­go ti­tle. Charles, a vet­er­an race of­fi­cial, out­lined that glob­al Sports tele­vi­sion gi­ants ES­PN is cov­er­ing the event for the sec­ond straight year. "ES­PN is back with us to do a full ten days of pro­gramme. Al­so, we have the UCI pres­i­dent Pat Mc­Quaid...He is ar­riv­ing on Fri­day. It is his first time here for the event. His pres­ence is an en­dorse­ment of the event."

Last year's race was aired on ES­PN and gained much vis­i­bil­i­ty and promi­nence as it was broad­cast to au­di­ences of more than 50 mil­lion view­ers in 40 coun­tries. This year the ES­PN team will be com­ing back with a big­ger crew for more days to film ex­ten­sive footage for a full one-hour pro­gramme which they plan to broad­cast to a wider cross-sec­tion of coun­tries around the world.

Charles added that cy­clists will be vy­ing for $120,000 in prizes and paid trib­utes to the new spon­sors. "Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny, Blink bmo­bile and Mag­dale­na Ho­tel are on board with us this year. Mag­dale­na pro­vid­ed com­pli­men­ta­ry ac­com­mo­da­tion for the ES­PN crew and UCI pres­i­dent. The THA is one of our main part­ners along with the Tourism De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion."

He added that the event has grown be­yond what an­tic­i­pat­ed when he first staged the race 26 years ago. "The race has gone be­yond my ex­pec­ta­tions with the UCI rat­ings and ES­PN com­ing on board. The in­ter­na­tion­al in­ter­est has caught me off-guard. I am now try­ing to raise the stan­dard be­cause it is get­ting so much at­ten­tion and we don't want to dis­ap­point." Top lo­cal rid­er Emile Abra­ham will miss this year's race for the first time as he con­tract­ed dengue af­ter he re­turned to the USA af­ter com­pet­ing in the Tour of Trinidad ear­li­er this year. "He is very de­pressed that he can't not com­pete this year. He is try­ing though to come in on Fri­day. He is a To­ba­go icon and a Caribbean rac­er," said Charles.

Sched­ule:

To­day (8.30am): cur­cuit race at Coral Gar­dens, Buc­coo

To­mor­row: -cur­cuit race at Mt Irvine beach fa­cil­i­ty

Fri­day: Ply­mouth

Sat­ur­day:Mar­ket Square Scar­bor­ough

Sun­day:Tour of To­ba­go.