The T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion has been giv­en the all clear to host its tri­als this week­end for next month's Pan Amer­i­can Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships in Chile.

De­liv­er­ing a de­ci­sion ear­li­er on Tues­day, High Court Judge West­min James dis­missed an in­junc­tion to stop the tri­als sought by two cy­cling clubs and three pro­fes­sion­al cy­clists.

The out­come was not a to­tal de­feat for the claimants, as Jus­tice James not­ed that the fed­er­a­tion had giv­en an un­der­tak­ing to con­sid­er the times record­ed by over­seas cy­clists while abroad when de­cid­ing on their fi­nal se­lec­tions for the cham­pi­onships.

Jus­tice James found that the in­junc­tion would have by­passed the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic de­ci­sions of the fed­er­a­tion's coun­cil, which twice vot­ed in favour of hav­ing the tri­als on Jan­u­ary 17.

"Ul­ti­mate­ly, main­tain­ing the sta­tus quo was deemed the most eq­ui­table path to en­sur­ing a fair out­come for the en­tire cy­cling com­mu­ni­ty," Jus­tice James said.

Jus­tice James al­so stat­ed that the clubs and cy­clists knew about the de­ci­sion in Sep­tem­ber last year but on­ly sought the in­junc­tion last month.

"This de­lay weighs heav­i­ly against the grant of eq­ui­table re­lief and un­der­mines the ur­gency re­lied up­on to jus­ti­fy the ap­pli­ca­tion," he said.

He al­so found that the claimants could be com­pen­sat­ed in dam­ages if they are even­tu­al­ly suc­cess­ful in their claim chal­leng­ing the fed­er­a­tion's pow­er to amend its pol­i­cy in re­la­tion to tri­als.

"While the Claimants em­pha­sise the im­por­tance of the Pan Amer­i­can Cham­pi­onships as a path­way to Olympic qual­i­fi­ca­tion, such loss is not in­her­ent­ly in­ca­pable of quan­tifi­ca­tion if found not to be too re­mote," he said.

In their court fil­ings, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, cy­cling clubs Just Liv­ing Dai­ly Cy­cling Acad­e­my and Heat­wave Cy­cling Club, and pro­fes­sion­al cy­clists Njisane Phillip, Alexi Cos­ta-Ramirez, and Makaira Wal­lace claimed that they were on­ly in­formed of the fed­er­a­tion's de­ci­sion, tak­en in mid-Sep­tem­ber, on No­vem­ber 10.

They claimed that the move was in con­tra­ven­tion of the fed­er­a­tion's se­lec­tion pol­i­cy, which states that tri­als should be sched­uled to take place on or be­fore 12 weeks pri­or to an event.

"The De­fen­dant has act­ed with­out prop­er rea­son and/or jus­ti­fi­ca­tion in de­vi­at­ing from its own se­lec­tion pol­i­cy," they said.

They con­tend­ed that af­ter con­cerns were raised over the move, the fed­er­a­tion held an emer­gency meet­ing in which its mem­bers ap­proved the move by a vote of 14 for and six against.

They claimed that the vote was un­law­ful, as mem­bers were not ful­ly in­formed of the sit­u­a­tion.

"The De­fen­dant has re­fused to re­con­sid­er its po­si­tion in re­spect of the im­prop­er tri­als and has pro­cured the most re­cent coun­cil vote by mis­lead­ing the mem­ber­ship and/or fail­ing or re­fus­ing to ful­ly dis­close per­ti­nent doc­u­ments to the Coun­cil as to the state of af­fairs with re­spect to the on­go­ing lit­i­ga­tion as be­tween the par­ties in the in­stant claim," they said.

They claimed that Phillip, Cos­ta-Ramirez, and Wal­lace would be prej­u­diced by the de­ci­sion, as they are based abroad and would have to dis­rupt their train­ing sched­ule and in­ter­na­tion­al com­mit­ments in or­der to par­tic­i­pate.

"Since fil­ing the in­stant claim, the third, fourth, and fifth claimants' in­ter­na­tion­al ranks have in­creased, fur­ther high­light­ing the ab­sur­di­ty of these last-minute manda­to­ry tri­als," they said.

They al­so ques­tioned whether the move may have an im­pact on the three ath­letes qual­i­fy­ing for the next Olympic Games.

"The Claimants' Olympic prospects are like­ly to be se­vere­ly di­min­ished and/or put in jeop­ardy as a con­se­quence of the De­fen­dant's un­law­ful and/or im­prop­er de­ci­sion to hold tri­als, as the Pan Amer­i­can Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships is a key step­ping stone to Olympic qual­i­fi­ca­tions, and/or if the De­fen­dant can sim­ply rewrite se­lec­tion poli­cies and cri­te­ria on a whim with 24 hours' no­tice, it would set a dan­ger­ous prece­dent for any fu­ture se­lec­tion process, in­clud­ing Olympic se­lec­tions," they said.

In re­sponse to the ap­pli­ca­tion, the fed­er­a­tion filed af­fi­davits from sev­er­al mem­bers, who vot­ed in favour of the tri­als at the meet­ing.

The mem­bers all claimed that they were in­formed of the group's le­gal con­cerns over the move and still vot­ed in favour of it, as they felt it was the most fair and ob­jec­tive se­lec­tion method in the cir­cum­stances.

The clubs and the cy­clists were rep­re­sent­ed by Dr Emir Crowne, Matthew Gayle, and Ja­son Jones, of New City Cham­bers. The fed­er­a­tion was rep­re­sent­ed by Zel­i­ca Haynes-Soo Hon, Ker­ri-Ann Oliv­er­ie, and Kali­fa Lovelace.