The Min­istry of Sports and Youth Af­fairs, through their Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Man­ag­er Shabu­ka Kam­bon was quick to al­lay fears yes­ter­day that Elite's Ath­letes Fund­ing for cy­clist Njisane Phillips was not forth­com­ing.

Phillips (Njisane) com­plained re­cent­ly about the with­hold­ing of Elite's Ath­letes Fund­ing (EAF) which ath­letes re­ceive from gov­ern­ment to help pre­pare for ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al tour­na­ments such as the Olympic Games and many oth­ers, as well as the need to train at home at the new­ly built Cy­cle­drome in Bal­main Cou­va. The young cy­clist, who has fast made him­self renown across the globe fol­low­ing his spate of im­pres­sive per­for­mances at the 2012 Lon­don Olympics, had al­so ex­pressed ma­jor con­cerns that he did not have a coach present­ly.

Kam­bon told the Guardian yes­ter­day that fund­ing will be com­ing soon for Njisane. "His fund­ing is present­ly be­ing processed as a mat­ter of ur­gency right now, so Njisane will have no prob­lem" Kam­bon said. He added Njisane's fund­ing as well as monies for a num­ber of oth­er ath­letes in oth­er sports, are be­ing sort­ed out now and they will have it in time to pre­pare for the com­ing Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Ac­cord­ing to the com­mu­ni­ca­tions boss at the min­istry, he un­der­stands how Njisane feels about the fund­ing as it is an Olympic year, say­ing he will con­tact Phillips soon af­ter the in­ter­view to re­lieve him of any fears. Phillips and oth­er ath­letes have al­so been giv­en the as­sur­ance that the amount giv­en for the EAF has not be cut or ad­just­ed in spite of the glob­al fall in the prices of oil and gas.

Kam­bon promised al­so that oth­er con­cerns ex­pressed by Phillips about the use of the cy­cle­drome will soon be a thing of the past. "I do not want to say too much about the state and readi­ness of the cy­cle­drome but what I can tell you is that a lot of progress has been made from since the point when the is­sue was raised last year and like the elite's ath­letes fund­ing, it will be fin­ished and opened soon for all who wants to use it" Kam­boon said.

Mean­while Kam­bon ex­plained he was pleased to dis­close that pay­ments of elite ath­letes fund­ing to Phillips have been up-to-date. But Phillip White­man, Njisane's step fa­ther said it was not.

White­man ex­plained, that Njisane has not re­ceived EAF from 2013 to most of last year (2015). He Point­ed out that: "In 2015 the cy­clist re­ceived one pay­ment of $100, 000 al­though Njisane has met the cri­te­ria to qual­i­fy for the max­i­mum $250, 000. But for the years 2013 and 2014 he got ab­solute­ly no fund­ing."

Asked how much EAF Njisane is sup­posed to re­ceive, White­man said $250, 000. Ac­cord­ing to the cri­te­ria which was set by the min­istry of sports, fund­ing is ref­er­enced based on ath­letes rat­ings in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, which, when in­ves­ti­gat­ed, in­di­cat­ed that ath­letes earn­ing a rat­ing of 40 and be­low in their re­spec­tive sport, would qual­i­fy for the max­i­mum amount of $250, 000.

How­ev­er Njisane who is ranked fourth in the world, has nev­er re­ceived that amount, his step fa­ther said. "Any­time we re­ceive fund­ing it is al­ways cut by about one-third" White­man said.

He said he is grate­ful for the sup­port of Njisane's lo­cal club Rigtech Son­ics which al­ways try to help their mem­ber with his prepa­ra­tions. Apart from the lo­cal club, Njisane gets fi­nan­cial sup­port from Di­rect TV, the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T and prod­ucts from Blue Wa­ters and Gatorade. Out­side of this group of peo­ple, White­man puts out the bulk of mon­ey to en­sure that his step-son climbs as close to the top in the of cy­cling as much as best as he can.

Phillips is cur­rent­ly on the verge of earn­ing a sport at the Olympics in the sprint as he will be­gin his prepa­ra­tion to­day at the last Cy­cling World Cup in Hong Kong. White­man said it will take some­thing out of the or­di­nary for his step-son to not qual­i­fy in the sprints now.

WAL­TER AL­IBEY

wal­ter.al­ibey@guardian.co.tt