Cy­clist Alexi Ramirez is claim­ing vic­to­ry against the T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion in an un­de­cid­ed le­gal bat­tle to date but now faces an­oth­er chal­lenge against the Rowe­na Williams-led TTCF to pro­duce a time for an event that she has nev­er com­pet­ed in.

Ramirez is one of six elite T&T rid­ers await­ing a fi­nal de­ci­sion by a mag­is­trate on whether fresh cy­cling tri­als should be used to re­place a se­lec­tion pol­i­cy the cy­cling fed­er­a­tion has used for many years to pick teams to rep­re­sent the coun­try at in­ter­na­tion­al events.

Sec­tion 4 of the pol­i­cy states, “The Rac­ing Com­mit­tee will host tri­als at least twelve (12) weeks pri­or to the for­eign in­ter­na­tion­al event. Sec­tion 5: “Cy­clist(s) se­lec­tion re­mains valid for a max­i­mum pe­ri­od of nine­ty (90) days from the date of no­ti­fi­ca­tion.”

Sec­tion 6: “The Rac­ing Com­mit­tee should se­lect cy­clists to rep­re­sent the coun­try at for­eign in­ter­na­tion­al events at least twelve (12) weeks be­fore the stag­ing of the events in or­der to al­low ad­e­quate time for the reg­is­tra­tion process with the for­eign and lo­cal pro­mot­ing en­ti­ty and the com­ple­tion of nec­es­sary fund­ing and trav­el arrange­ments.”

How­ev­er, with the Pan Amer­i­can Track Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships set to ped­al off on Feb­ru­ary 17 in San­ti­a­go, Chile, na­tion­al tri­als are sched­uled to be­gin on Sat­ur­day at the Na­tion­al Cy­cling Cen­tre (NCC) in Bal­main, Cou­va.

She told Guardian Me­dia Sports on Mon­day that she is in the dark with re­spect to when a fi­nal de­ci­sion will be made by the courts; how­ev­er, she said any de­ci­sion will be a vic­to­ry for her.

Ramirez said, “What we were try­ing to do is for them to kind of agree on a de­ci­sion with­out tak­ing it this far as the court, but they didn’t. I guess they didn’t want to come to an agree­ment; they want­ed to go this far with it, so I mean, now it’s just to see if they are go­ing to keep miss­ing dead­lines. I mean, I think that’s the most im­por­tant thing for us: even if we go to the event, it’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly that we win; at least now they know that they re­al­ly do need to stick to their pol­i­cy and stick to time­lines and stick to dates that they have in­stead of just al­ways do­ing what­ev­er they feel when­ev­er they feel.”

“They wouldn’t be like, ‘Oh well, we did this wrong; we’ll just vote and change it,’ you know what I mean? Like, at least we could get them to now stick to the pol­i­cy, then it’s a win for us,” Ramirez ex­plained. While tri­als are ex­pect­ed to be­gin on Sat­ur­day, in­ter­na­tion­al rid­ers such as Ramirez and Nicholas Paul, among oth­ers, are ex­pect­ed to sub­mit times to the TTCF to ver­i­fy their se­lec­tion.

Ramirez end­ed 2025 with a sec­ond-place fin­ish in the Women’s Scratch Race in Por­tu­gal. She usu­al­ly com­petes in the en­durance events, but with the cy­cling fed­er­a­tion re­quest­ing times for just four events for the tri­als, name­ly the fly­ing 200 me­tres, the stand­ing 250-me­tre sprint, the kilo­me­tre time tri­al, and the in­di­vid­ual pur­suit, she said she now faces a new con­cern.

“So, the prob­lem with en­durance bunch rac­ing is we don’t race by time, so that’s like the whole next ar­gu­ment in this whole thing. They want me to ride an in­di­vid­ual pur­suit which has noth­ing to do with the event that I com­pete in, so it’s like ask­ing a marathon run­ner to go and do a hun­dred-me­tre sprint; the events don’t re­late, and so that’s like a whole next ar­gu­ment now, the fact that they are re­quir­ing the rid­ers who want to do the en­durance bunch races and who have been do­ing the en­durance bunch races to now ride an in­di­vid­ual pur­suit, when I’ve nev­er done an in­di­vid­ual pur­suit in my life.”

“I’ve nev­er rid­den in­di­vid­ual pur­suit be­cause that’s not the event that I raced in. In­di­vid­ual pur­suit is not even an Olympic event, so that’s the whole next ar­gu­ment. We know en­durance bunch rac­ing doesn’t have times, so I’m like, Well, I can sub­mit my re­sults from all these races.”

Ac­cord­ing to Ramirez, “If you were to ask me if I was pleased with my re­sults, I would say yes, def­i­nite­ly I’m pleased with my re­sults that I cur­rent­ly have on the rank­ing. I have worked hard this year and got the re­sults that I need­ed to get, the rank­ing that I have, but I don’t have times be­cause I don’t race timed events, so that’s the ex­tra dif­fi­cult part now.”